


The Pressure Rises <On Indefinite Hiatus; Do Not Expect To See This Completed In Any Reasonable Timeframe>

by Word_Devourer



Series: Accelerated Canon [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Accelerated Canon, Characters and Ships will be added as they appear in the story, Dramatic Hawkmoth, F/M, post-reveal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-06-17 11:27:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15460347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Word_Devourer/pseuds/Word_Devourer
Summary: When Chat Blanc was defeated, and Hawkmoth stopped sending villains, they thought he was gone for good.  They thought they'd defeated him so soundly he wouldn't come back.They were wrong.  Hawkmoth has redoubled his efforts, beginning to decode the grimoire, even as his skills in making villains slowly improve, gradually turning a difficult fight into an impossible one...  Impossible without some help, that is.Join our heroes as they fight to keep an hone their skills and keep an edge over their enemy.





	1. Silencer

**Author's Note:**

> This is the follow-up to the story 'French Vanilla.' It is recommended that you read it before reading this. However, if you don't want to, a (spoiler-heavy) synopsis of the first story awaits you a few lines down.
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> French Vanilla, the previous story, chronicled the slow collapse of the web of ignorance keeping Marinette and Adrien from discovering each other's identities. Rena Rouge has now become a full member of the team. Notably, the story featured Alya figuring out that Adrien was Cat Noir, and, by the end, Adrien realizing that Alya was Rena Rouge. In addition, following Marinette's Akumatization into Chat Blanc, she and Adrien both became aware of the other's identities, and are, as of the beginning of this story, happily together.

As far as Marinette was concerned, things had gotten _much_ more complicated.  Of course, things were really significantly simpler, but she hadn’t _known_ how complicated they were back then.  Now, she _knew_ that Adrien was Cat Noir, as well as knowing that Alya was Rena Rouge.  That alone meant she’d had to rewire about 30 things in her head to account for being able to tell Adrien things, but only when they were alone, or both heroes.  Everything still had to be compartmentalized depending on whether they were in costume or not. Then, there was the issue of their relationship; of course, complicated or not, she couldn’t have been happier about the fact that her crush liked her back, and that she got to spend time with him both at school and on duty.  Still, it made things tricky.

For example, everyone knew that Adrien and Marinette were together, they hadn’t made much of a secret of it, but that meant that that Adrien and Ladybug couldn’t act like they were together, nor Marinette and Cat Noir, for fear of scandal.  They couldn’t even let their feelings for each other show as Ladybug and Cat Noir, because… Well, because of the other rogue variable (Rouge variable, more like) in this equation.

Alya, bless her soul, still wasn’t supposed to know about _either_ of their secret identities, but she’d _somehow_ figured out who Cat Noir really was.  That was _Alya’s_ problem.   _Also_ her problem was, in turn, concealing her identity from Adrien, even though he, in a rare moment of clarity, had uncovered _her_ identity (Marinette was still proud of him for that one).  What _was_ Marinette’s problem, though, was the fact that every time she wanted to flirt with Cat Noir, she couldn’t, because Rena Rouge would give him scandalized looks for the rest of the mission, and even back in school.  If she kept doing it, either Alya would spill her ‘secret,’ to Marinette, or she’d figure out the truth. In either case, it would be exceptionally awkward.

So, in the end, Marinette could only talk to Alya about Alya things, and had no reason to talk to Rena Rouge, theoretically, but Ladybug _could_ talk to Rena Rouge about either, _unless Cat Noir was around_ , in which case it was _only_ hero things, even though both she and Cat Noir knew Rena Rouge’s identity.  In turn she-

It was exhausting.  Next time they all did something together (as heroes, that was), she’d have to take a full account of what secrets she could let slip, and which she couldn’t, and maybe, just maybe, she’d be able to simplify things a bit.

Of course, they hadn’t _been_ doing things together as heroes recently, since Hawkmoth had fallen off the face of the earth.  On the one hand, of course, that meant less in-costume foolery, but all the same, she just _knew_ if she stopped thinking about it, she’d mess it up next time, which could be disastrous.

****

Meanwhile, a good issue to have, but still kind of an issue, was Cat Noir.  The good news was that he was still acting like the same Cat Noir she’d known for months.  The bad news was that he was still acting like the same Cat Noir she’d known for months. The same lines he kept dropping like greased cheese (That is to say, often, and cheesily) now came with the implicit knowledge that it was Adrien Agreste, boy of her dreams delivering them.  Sure, she was used to the lines, but not from _Adrien_ , only from some mystery-kid.

On the other hand, it _was_ immensely satisfying to be able to break out some of the witty comebacks she had felt would have been getting his hopes up before.  Now, however high his hopes got, she’d be glad to meet them.

On the whole, confusing identities or not, she couldn’t deny she was having the time of her life.

\--

He looked up, eyes half bleared from concentration.  He was a patient man, no denying it, and very focused, but this?  This had been too much. Three separate tabs were open on his screen, detailing, in one, a study in cryptography, in the other, a study in language, and in the third, a page of designs he’d been occasionally looking over at whenever the first two bogged his mind down.

He absently fiddled with the pallet on one of the designs.  The minute differences in color, normally an engaging challenge for his mind, simply did not register.  What did it matter whether the seafoam was a half-shade lighter?

Normally, when he ended up like this, he’d find some way of distracting himself, but with what?

He flicked between a dozen or so pages of designs.  None of them spoke to him right now. He looked back down at the grimoire, now marked in several places where he thought he might have something.  That was worse.

He needed to stand up and… Exercise?

What he really _felt_ like doing right now, was making a new villain, but he couldn’t do that because…  He looked back down at the grimoire. Why _couldn’t_ he do that?  It wasn’t like he’d be losing anything by letting his exhausted brain do something a bit more mindless right now.  Honestly, it would probably be invigorating.

A smile curled at the edge of his mouth.  Who knew? Maybe today would be his day. _Then_ , he wouldn’t have to worry about cracking a code in another language.

Gabriel Agreste stood up, and stretched out his back, which cracked satisfactorily.

Time for some mayhem.

\--

For once, she really felt like she understood the assignment, a lab on tensile strength, which meant Ms. Mendeleev sitting at her desk grading papers wasn’t even a concern for her.  She was too busy having Adrien as he lab partner that she didn’t even notice things going wrong until it was too late.

But things only went wrong a few minutes later.

****

Chloe Bourgeois had, of course, ended up paired up with Sabrina.  Not that it had been on the official list, but, she always found a way.  The _other_ thing she found, this one _against_ her will, was the pair of lovebirds across the room from her.  Her lab station didn’t face them, but every so often, she would turn around and _there_ would be Adrien Agreste, the boy she… Well, she didn’t have a crush on him, but seeing him so enamored with someone annoyed her, somehow.  More to the point, of all the people he could _possibly_ be interested in, it had to be Marinette.  Marinette Dupain-Cheng, who…

She was staring daggers at the oblivious pair from behind, neglecting her assignment, as usual.  After all, what was the point of a group assignment if both people did it?

Sabrina, carefully measuring something out, looked over at her, and followed her gaze.

\--

“Despicable, right,” she said.  Sabrina had also noticed the two of them.  She thought it might have been cute, but Chloe was annoyed by it, and when Chloe was annoyed, she spread it around.

Chloe didn’t say anything, instead staring at them with a slowly shifting expression.  It looked like she was trying to move something sour around in her mouth to avoid tasting it.

Maybe…? “Do you want me to mess with them?”

Chloe froze.  She smiled slowly, and then the smile faded.  She inhaled, and then, after an interminable time, shook her head.

“She’s not _worth_ it,” she said, in an oddly soft voice.  Then, the bite returned, and she finished, “besides, I can’t afford to get a bad grade on this just because _you_ were off getting revenge.”

Sabrina turned back to the experiment, eyebrows raised.   _Chloe_ , not going for revenge?  Well, far be it from her to question something she didn’t have to do.

After a bit, just as she was getting the first part set up, Chloe turned around.

“They’re an eyesore,” she said, “I can’t look in that whole _direction_ because of them.”

She reached down to her pocket, and clucked in annoyance.  “Where is my phone!?” She spun around, and hesitated.

Sabrina looked.  The phone was sitting out at her desk, where she’d had it out while Ms. Mendeleev had been explaining the lab.  It was right next to Adrien and Marinette. Chloe shuddered beside her, and turned back.

“Hhhhghhgmm,” grumbled Chloe.  “How am I supposed to sit through a whole lab without my phone?”

Sabrina contemplated for a second.  A long second. This was a terrible idea, right?  Well, it would be normally, but maybe… Fine, she was going for broke.

“If you want something to do with your hands,” she said, “It’d be easier to get good measurements if you steadied the clamps.”

“That’s peasant wo-”

She looked back over her shoulder, and shuddered again.

“Fine.”

She gingerly put her hands on the clamps.  She _did_ have steady hands.

For once in her life, Chloe was actually _helping_ with something.  This was truly a miraculous-

“Dude, Chloe, are you actually doing something for once?”

That was Alix’s voice.

“Excuuse me?” cut back Chloe, one hand leaving its hold, “I do things all the time!  I am very helpful.”

Alix laughed.  “No you’re not.”

“Yes I am!”

“You will keep your conversations within your groups!”

“Of course, Ms. Mendeleev,” said Alix, looking back down with a barely visible eyeroll, but the damage was done.

“I think I must have misheard you,” said Max, from two groups down, “what I heard was you saying that Chloe was assisting with the experiment.  Across all previous observations, that has proven rare enough to have avoided all observation.”

“No, she looked like she was trying to help,” said Alix.

“I’m very helpful!” repeated Chloe, affronted, the other hand coming halfway off, turning to face the speakers.

“All previous data suggests this is false,” came a small, not quite human voice from around where Max was.

Sabrina stared intently down, carefully centering the pipette, vainly hoping her own careful neutrality would pull Chloe with it.

“I said,” began Ms. Mendeleev again, but she was cut off by Kim, from somewhere behind her.

“I mean, if the robot’s saying it, it’s _gotta_ know what it’s talking about.”

“Excuse me!?  You think the glorified calculator knows what it even _means_ to be helpful!?”

Then Alya’s voice, “I think calculator's are usually pretty helpful.”

“Class!  I said-

“Besides, Markov is much more than a simple calculator, as I have explained to you at length.  Markov is-

“Blah blah blah, you made a robot, we’re supposed to be impressed?”

“I mean, I’m pretty impressed.  Li’l dude’s probably smarter than me.”

“Exactly.  While programming an artificial intelligence is entirely possible, it is still a difficult feat, that-

“CLASS!”

“Requires skill and technical knowledge, which means-

“Which means you’re probably supposed to be impressed, right?”

“Exactly, thank you, Kim.”

“Whatever, you made a-

“That’s IT!  YOU’RE _ALL_ GETTING DETENTIONS!”  The scream silenced everything, as every head turned to the usually reserved Ms. Mendeleev, whose face seemed unnaturally twisted.  She reached into a drawer of her desk, and pulled out a few papers. She looked down at them, and suddenly seemed disgusted. She did a sweep around the room, and then, papers in hand, stormed out of the room.

\--

Perfect, he could feel exactly what he was looking for.

Now… How did it go, again?

Ah yes.

“A teacher, exasperated beyond words by her class’s failure to listen to her.  A perfect target for one of my Akumas.” He selected one from the cloud. Even after all this time, the sensation of corrupting it still felt wrong, but that aside, he couldn’t keep the evil grin off of his face.

“Fly away, and _evilize_ her.”

It was almost a shame he’d have to give this up once he’d acquired their Miraculous, if only because he couldn’t justify terrorizing Paris simply for his amusement; he couldn’t deny, though, it was kind of fun.

\--

Marinette didn’t know exactly what had happened.  She’d had a vague conception of things getting louder behind her, and then suddenly Ms. Mendeleev had started screaming.  Now, she would have dearly liked to run after her, but, unfortunately, she didn’t even know what had happened.

No.  No, maybe she didn’t know what was going on, but she might as well try, right?

She ran, into the hallway.  Left, right, _there_. So this was what it meant to storm somewhere.  It felt like even getting close was a gamble, and every second she didn't get closer, she was getting further away.  She had to try.

She rushed forward. "Ms. Mendeleev!"

She turned.  There was an instant where she paused, and then "What are you doing out of the classroom!?"  She didn't wait for an answer. "Get back in there!"

"Ms. Mendeleev, I just wanted to-" something caught in her eye.  A strange image, glittering with an unnatural light. "Oh no."

"Oh no is right, young lady.  Now get back to the classroom, or I'll have to give you an _extra_ detent-"

As a gesture brought the stack of papers up, there was a strange, grinding noise, and as her arm came back down, the Akuma was gone.  It was, to Marinette's ear, uncomfortably familiar. As the shadow fell across her face, she knew she had to get out. She had to transform, and she had to _warn_ people.

So she ran, pulling out her phone as she went.  She couldn't go back into the classroom; no way.  She'd get caught up in there, and then where would her chance at transformation be?

She took a few turns, until she made it to the bathrooms.  Classic transformation spot. Inside, then into a stall. Nobody could see her.

"Tikki, spots on!"

...

"Ladybug?" Came a small, worried voice.

For a fraction of a second, her heart stopped.  There must have been someone in one of the other stalls, which meant...

Her heart started beating again.  It meant nothing. All they would know is that Ladybug came to this school.  Alya had said as much after she'd dropped her history book that one time. She let the breath out.

"Yes."

"Is there a villain?"

"Yes."

"I guess I should stay in here, then?"

"Probably."

"Alright.  Good luck."

"Thank you."

And just like that, she was gone.

\--

She'd thought Hawkmoth was done?  But, apparently not. She sighed, inside the bathroom stall.  Did this mean they'd start getting Akumas again? She'd already had enough of those in the past months to last her twenty years.

On the upside, if Ladybug herself had said to stay here until the trouble was over, it wasn’t like her teacher would get on her case for staying a bit longer.  She pulled out her phone.

\--

In the noise that had slowly been returning over the past minutes, Alya's phone buzzed in her pocket.  She pulled it out. Text from Marinette.

'akuma loose'

Alya swore internally.  She couldn't transform here, and, more to the point, Adrien and Ladybug needed to know.  Adrien was talking to Nino, but still; she switched to a different conversation on her phone.  Adrien Agreste.

'Mari says Akuma on loose' -Send

Alright, hero notified.  Ladybug couldn't be contacted so reliably, but if she could get a notice out on the Ladyblog...  She opened the relevant app.

Post.  Urgent.  'A reliable source suggests an Akuma has appeared in Francois Dupont High School.  Stay careful out there, folks.'

Alright, the most pressing sides had been notified as best as she could manage.

Adrien was stepping out the door, clutching at his stomach, probably faking some kind of issue to get out, if she had to guess. Nino seemed concerned, but was staying behind.  Good.

Now, the rest of the class, which was well and truly loud again, should probably know too.  Alya was almost surprised it wasn't Chloe at the center of the shouting, and then realized that she'd recovered her phone somewhere along the line.  Apparently there were more important things to catch up on.

"Guys!" she shouted.  Nobody listened. "Guys!"  Fine. If she had to force things...  She barged straight into the middle of the crowd.

"Everybody shut up!"

There was a tiny, momentary silence.

"Marinette just sent me a message that there's an Akuma."

...

"What?  I thought Hawkmoth had-

"Silence."

The voice was barely audible, but it was _perfectly_ audible, cutting through the room.  They turned. There was no denying the figure had been Akumatized.  Her face was unnaturally sunken and pale, and her eyes were dark. More worrying though, was the mouth, stitched shut.  After a head like that, the rest of the body seemed almost humdrum; it was human shaped, but the lab coat Ms. Mendeleev had always worn was frayed, long strips of cloth hanging down from the sleeves, twisting slightly in the nonexistent breeze.  Just visible in her right hand, though, camouflaged by the clothing, was a sheaf of papers.

"Ms. Mendeleev?" said Alya.

"No.  I am Silencer."  The villain looked around at the horrified faces.  "Excellent," she whispered, mouth not moving, "now, resume the lab.  Without talking."

There was no choice.  Alya couldn't slip away now, if for no other reason than that her disappearance would coincide too perfectly with Rena Rouge's appearance.  Cat Noir would be here soon, though, and hopefully Ladybug soon after (Although if it went anything like the encounter with Chat Blanc, that wasn't a certainty).

The room was silent as everyone, with a great deal of silent eye contact, made their way back to their lab stations.  Even Chloe seemed to have learned the dangers of backsassing villains, and had put her phone away.

Silencer sat down at the desk, staring down at the papers.  She grabbed a pen, and produced a sheet of paper from the stack.  She began scratching something out on it.

There was nothing to be done but wait.

\--

She'd run into Adrien going the other way, but had only offered a subtle nod.  After all, what did Ladybug know about Adrien Agreste? Surely nothing of note.  Maybe she'd rescued him once or twice, but by now, who hadn’t she rescued?

She did a circuit of the area, obviously just for recon, and not at all to stall for time.

As she came back around, Chat Noir completely coincidentally was stepping out of the bathroom Adrien Agreste had just entered.

"Keeping that identity intact?" she asked.

He winked.  "Intact as ever."

"Good.  I think I saw the Akuma land in her papers."

“Got it.  Let’s see what we’re up against.”

How did two people, heroes for all of Paris, know their way around this particular high school?  It was a mystery, but in just a second, there they were, just outside the door. They didn't go in.

Ladybug jerked her head at the door.

Chat Noir closed his eyes and angled his head.  Then, he tilted it at a few different angles, and furrowed his brow.  He looked up at her with an expression of confusion. He shrugged.

There was a voice, like a whisper in the brain.  "Next on the list for detentions. Hm... Juleka Couffaine."  There was a sound of rustling paper, and then-

"Hey!  She didn't say a word this whole time, she's been completely silent!  You can't just-

"Fine!  Next on the list, Rose Lavillant."

A high-pitched gasp, and a sound in the air.  Then, silence.

They looked at each other, and Ladybug sucked in a breath.  She let out a faint groan. That wasn’t a good start.

"I can hear you," whispered the voice in her head.  "and I won't tolerate any of your childish sighing."

Chat Noir whipped his head over.

Her eyes widened, and she shrugged, helplessly.

No.  Not helplessly, she thought, steeling herself.  She was Ladybug. This was just another villain, for all Hawkmoth hadn’t sent one in a while.  "And what does ‘won’t tolerate it’ mean?" she muttered, and jumped as a finger pressed itself to her lips.

The stitched lips twisted into a smile.  "It means that I have enough detention slips for everyone."

The figure was unsettling, and she stepped back, straight into Chat Noir.

"Now.  Sit still while I write." The strips of cloth from her left arm reached out towards Ladybug, who tried to push backwards... Straight into Chat Noir.  He tried to get out of her way, but instead they fell back.

The smile twitched slightly.

Together, they stumbled up, as the strips of cloth stretched out.

"Now, now," she whispered, "hold still.  It will make all of this so much easier."

"Not a chance," cut back Chat Noir, almost making it to his feet as a sudden punch landed in his stomach.  He doubled over and let out a wheeze.

"Shhh."

Ladybug pulled him away, into the classroom.

The figure was following them, in a leisurely sort of way, as they entered.  She turned away from it, and came face to face with...

It looked like a mummy.  It was a figure, frozen with an arm in front of its face, shielding it from something.  This wasn't an ordinary mummy, though. It was wrapped in..

No, wrapped wasn't quite right.  It wasn't fully wrapped yet, but it was close, and even as she watched, the covering spread, until the figure seemed to be covered by layers and layers of...  It had to be paper.

"My first one," whispered the voice.  "Perfect. Quiet."

There was a paper held in the cloth of her left sleeve, with one cloth-tentacle holding a pen.

"Now.  Is Ladybug a first name or a last name?  Is it Lady Bug?"

Chat Noir pulled his baton.  "How about you-

The strike landed far too fast, this one in his throat.

"Shhh!"

Ladybug tried to land a kick on her, which she ably blocked.

Not as ably as she'd punched, though.  Something was off.

Chat Noir coughed fit to produce a lung, trying to make himself breathe again.  Her yo-yo wasn’t much use at this distance, but she certainly wasn’t about to let that stop her from fighting.

“Then let’s handle the easy one first.  Chat Noir makes more sense as a name. You can tell which is first and which is last.”

Chat Noir gasped in a breath, and stood up.

\--

Alright.  He was up.  Now what? No, this was fine, he still wasn’t combat ready.  For that, he needed his breath back, and he needed…

He pulled his baton out, and set it twirling.  He’d make this villain regret the punches it had landed on him, and the way it had frozen one of his classmates, and _especially_ the way it was coming after Ladybug right now.

He was ready.  Now, to get her attention.

“Hey!” he said, and took a fist across his face before he was able to continue his taunt.  Silencer slipped past, tripping him as she did so. He managed to block the punch coming for his spine as his knee hit the ground by twisting his whole body.  Unfortunately, the twist left him off balance, and he fell on his back, legs wrapped around themselves. He was down, but he sure wasn’t about to be _out_.  He opened his mouth to say something else, only to hold his tongue as he heard a quiet ‘shhh!’

His eyes flicked over, and he saw Ladybug with a finger to her lips.  He looked back at his enemy, and light dawned. Of course. No talking around Silencer.  Got it.

He kicked back up to his feet, pushing the villain back in the process, and gave a thumbs up.

In an almost habitual gesture, he began spinning his baton in his back hand.  Then, with a free hand, he beckoned to her. The message was obvious. _‘Come fight.’_

…

She didn’t.  She slowly eased herself a step back, a grin forming on those stitched lips.

“Second detention goes to Chat Noir,” she whispered, bringing the top sheet of the paper in front of her.  He could see the neat handwriting, and just managed to catch sight of ‘Chat Noir,’ and ‘disruption in-’ before the paper was flying at him faster than paper had any right to.  Not faster than a cat’s reflexes, though. He flipped to the side, and his eyes followed the paper to the wall-

Not the wall.  Not the wall not the wall not the- he flipped again, as the paper, _still_ faster than it had any right to be, followed him, back, forth.  He tried to land a strike on the villain, even as she seemed supremely unconcerned by his distracted efforts.

He brought up his baton.  Maybe he could destroy it?

But no, he smacked the paper, and it simply slipped around the baton, and kept coming, which, unfortunately, meant it had dodged his guard, and was mere inches from him.

Time seemed to slow down.

His hand came off of the baton, trying on instinct to block the paper.  It certainly caught it, but block would have been a stretch, as it molded itself around his hand.  Then, simultaneously, it began to spread, and he could hear Ladybug shout ‘Chat Noir!’

A flash, as Silencer appeared in front of her to take revenge for the noise in her orderly classroom.

Then, time suddenly resumed its normal pace, and there he was, arm already buried up to the elbow in spreading paper.  There was nothing he could do. This didn’t seem like something he could tear off, and soon enough, he’d be covered like Rose was, unable to do _anything_ , leaving Ladybug alone, _again._

Up to his shoulder now, and creeping across his chest, and finally almost to his neck.

No.  He had a chance.  Something to keep him in the fight.

His eyes flicked down to the hand, now covered in paper, where the ring still was, hidden though it might be.

The paper wrapped his neck, but he didn’t need much breath to let out a near-silent ‘Cataclysm…’

Then, in an instant, the paper was over his mouth, over his nose, eyes, head…  It wasn’t like suffocation. It didn’t feel like he _needed_ to breathe.  No, it was like he was falling asleep, almost.  It was quiet and peaceful…

Except…

There was what felt like an electric charge in his hand; a familiar, unstable energy.  But it wasn’t quite normal, either. He could feel it, not just the aura of energy, but the force pulsing _inside_ his veins, seemingly unable to escape.  Then, he could feel it in his skin, and… He could feel his hand losing parts of its covering.

\--

The villain had more important things to worry about than a cell-phone out in class, which meant that even if Rena Rouge couldn’t make it to the fight, at least Alya could record it for posterity.  She, like others in the class, had noticed the sparks forcing their way out of Cat Noir’s cocooned hand. Cracks were forming, paper was falling, and growing back. She could almost have believed the fabled ‘Cataclysm’ had met its match.

Almost.

Even as Ladybug tried to maintain her close-quarters fight with Silencer, the destructive force finally overwhelmed the paper’s regeneration, papers sizzling off, turning to the familiar ash that Cataclysm always left behind… At first, it was just in the hand, but the force kept spreading, up and up, and up, layers burning off, slowly revealing him, first his hand, and then, slowly, the rest of his arm.

As the force neared his shoulder, there was a moment when everything stopped; he held still for a short second, and then..

The shell of papers exploded.

Of course, an explosion like that was going to draw the villain’s attention.

\--

As Silencer vanished from in front of her, Ladybug’s eyes flicked over to the most recent noise, which was Cat Noir’s…

That wasn’t how he usually looked.  His hair was standing halfway on end, and he was grinning, almost nervous, with his eyes wide open.  The strangest part, though, was the way his pupils had expanded as far as they could.

No, scratch that, the eyes weren’t the strangest part.  The strangest part was the glitter of Cataclysm’s energy across his body.

Or, maybe it was the fact that he’d _caught_ the villain’s hand

“Huh,” he said, and his hand was suddenly empty, but his other arm was up, taking the full force of another punch.

He looked down at the villain, then over at her, then back at the villain.

“Somaybenow’sthemoment,” he said, whole body flickering into new positions with every sound he rattled out, “topulloutaLuckyCharm?Imeanitjustfeelslikeoneofthosetimeswhen-

Oh.  He was just going to keep chattering, wasn’t he.  Well, there was no denying, the villain was occupied, and when the villain was busy.  She chuckled internally; ‘When the cat’s away...’ Then she, also internally, cursed that Cat Noir had infected her with the… Whatever they were, probably not even puns, really.  Anyway.

“Lucky Charm!” she said, as quietly as she could while still feeling like she’d given the ability its due.

Now, what was she going to…

A small, rectangular box.  She looked a bit closer. One face was strangely rough, and when she pushed on another-

“Matches?”

So her Lucky Charm was matches?

So, presumably she was supposed to set something on fire?  She looked around, but… What was setting something on fire supposed to do?  What would it accomplish? Then again, what else was she supposed to use a matchbox for?

She did a quick 360 of the room, and sure, there were things she could burn, including, she would wager, Chloe’s entire hairstyle, but none of them would _help_.

Then, her eyes seized on… Surely not.  Noise just made her _stronger_ , didn’t it?  And yet… Lucky Charm had never led her wrong yet, and if it said set off the fire alarm, then she was just going to have to do it, and trust that whatever force selected Lucky Charms knew what it was doing.

Well, with that in mind, she just needed something that would produce smoke, and for that…  Her eyes froze on the class tissue-box. That would work.

\--

His ring was beeping far faster than it should have; it had been, what, 20 seconds?  Less? The first pad had already blinked out of existence, and he could feel the second one on the verge of it.

It didn’t matter, though, since he didn’t have time to consider it anyway.  All he had time for was babbling. Had he spilled his secret identity somewhere in there?  Probably not. Could he have? Probably.

He had, on some level noticed Marinette- he mentally corrected himself, _Ladybug_ , using her Lucky Charm, which meant that with any luck he wouldn’t have to watch too many more-

One more pad blinked out of existence.

Alright, no problem, all he had to do was keep fighting and hope it would be…

There was a ringing noise.  Saved by the bell?

That wasn’t the kind of bell that saved you.  That was the fire alarm.

The villain vanished from in front of him, and there was the sound of metal smashing into pieces.

He stared, eyes wider than they’d already been, at the twisted ruins of the alarm bell.  Then, seemingly in slow motion, it began to rain. He blinked, and his brain caught up with his eyes.  The sprinkler system was going off, a torrential downpour of water.

\--

She was really starting to wonder about this.  There was no denying that the fire alarm had felt right, but she’d destroyed the bell, which, as far as Ladybug could tell, was the only part of the whole maneuver that should have affected Silencer.

Suddenly, as she tried to work the problem through her mind, Chat Noir was beside her.

“Sorry,” he said, brandishing his ring in her face, “out of time.”  All four pads had already vanished, even though it couldn’t have been more than a minute.  In a flash, he was gone, blitzing his way out of the room, and down the hall.

Just the two of them, now; well, and the class as a whole, but she doubted they’d be much help right now.

Silencer turned to look at her.  So. She had about three-and-a-half minutes to figure this out.  That wasn’t promising, and the fact that she was getting completely _soaked_ wasn’t helping.  So. She had burned the tissue box to activate the fire alarm-

She blocked a few more attacks, and didn’t strike back.  She wasn’t going to win it that way, she knew that much.

-but the noise that she’d been expecting to help had been cut short almost immediately.  Now, she was just left with a metric ton of water, which gave her… What? How was it going to help her?  Well, she supposed, wet paper was impossible to write on, which meant no detentions. Even if it would hold ink, it always tore so easily when...

Oh.  No. That was completely ridiculous…

But no more than making a lot of noise in front of a villain who thrived on it.  This was _exactly_ the kind of crazy plan that her Miraculous would serve up… A single, stupid move, and everything would be over.

Two more blocks, and she retreated.  She needed the villain at a significant distance, she knew that.

Out into the hallway, villain in tow, and two long, long jumps away.

Silencer was almost 50 feet away, walking slowly.  Good.

This was ridiculous.  This was stupid and pointless and-

No time for that.  She took a deep breath.

Then, with every scrap of air in her lungs, she screamed, “OVER HERE!!”

The result was instant, and exceptional.  She couldn’t feel her entire chest, just from that one strike, her whole body snapping back against a wall, with a dull _thud_. But, as she forced her eyes back open, she saw the familiar black-purple energy spreading across the villain, and there, back where she’d been before, just visible at this distance, a single flapping butterfly.

Well, even if it had been a few weeks, she knew just how to handle that.  She forced off the pain, and ran forward.

\--

He’d known it was an option.  Really, he hadn’t even expected to win, not today.  Still, he had to admit, he hadn’t expected to lose like _that_ .  He’d have to keep in mind, he supposed, that a fast enough villain really _could_ break its own item if it accelerated fast enough.

“You may have received top marks today, Ladybug and Cat Noir,” he said, and grinned, “but soon enough, you will surely _fail_.”

Nice.  Sick pun to finish things off.  He almost wished they could actually _hear_ him, and he wasn’t stuck apostrophizing to thin air.  Apostrophizing… He shook his head. He’d turned a _science_ teacher, not a _linguistics_ teacher, he should be saying he wished he could see their _reactions_.

“Dark Wings Fall,” he said, face only slightly disturbed by the chuckle he was holding in.

Alright.  Alright, this was good; a good way of resetting his mind while he decoded the grimoire.  Plus, he was sure he could get valuable insights into his enemies, and enhance his own skills in the process, so that even if they _did_ last until he finished the code-breaking, they’d be horribly outmatched by… Whatever he unlocked.

With that comforting thought, he returned to his study.

 _“Let them have their petty victory,”_ he thought, _“I will be the one to win the war.”_


	2. Fog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A study session is cut short before it even begins by an oncoming wave of bitter, alcoholic fog. Ladybug, Chat Noir, and Rena Rouge must venture forth, and find the villain at the heart of the cloud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We finally get a little bit of some other classmates, maybe a bit of DJWIFI.

“So,” she’d whispered when they’d seen each other just before school started, “I asked about that question you wanted answered.”

“Oh?” He’d said.

“It’s… I’ll explain later,” she’d said.

He’d waited.

…

At lunch, Ivan and Mylene hadn’t been able to find a seat, not even mentioning that Alya and Nino were of _course_ sticking around.  Between the four of them, Marinette hadn’t even been able to raise the topic.

…

True, they _had_ done an experiment in science (Much quieter than the last one- Make that louder?  Less action-packed), but they’d been in different groups; he’d actually been teamed up with Alya, which was interesting, since Marinette, no, make that ‘Ladybug’ had given him the go ahead to… Oh how did it go?  Tell _her_ that _he_ knew who _she_ really was.  He was of the opinion that Ms. Mendeleev had split him and Marinette apart because she thought they distracted each other.  She wasn’t exactly wrong, but he and _Alya_ hadn’t exactly gotten much done that day _either_.

…

So now, hours later, when Marinette had finally gotten twenty seconds alone with him, he was almost surprised when she said, “Like I was saying, I asked about...” and she looked around, conspiratorially.  He almost wanted to roll his eyes at the gesture, even if the secrecy she treated the topic with was one of the most adorable things he’d ever seen.  They were practically alone, and even if they hadn’t been, a display like that would only draw more attention.  “...your question,” she finished.  “According to… Our friend in the business, it’s way harder than it should be to find out that particular secret, and it’s even harder if you… If you’re not keeping the same secret.”

He nudged her, gently.  “C’mon Marinette, you’re making it sound like something illegal.  It’s more suspicious than just saying it normally.”

She shook her head.  “It’s just… It’s just… I’m, really happy that you know, but I’m _still_ supposed to keep it a secret.”

“Of course,” he said, “I understand completely.  You don’t want people knowing our secrets.  But it wouldn’t help anybody for you to get accused of selling drugs, or something.”

She blushed.  “Well, when you put it like that…”

“So…” he said, “let me make sure I’ve got this right.  Master Fu told you that it’s just _hard_ to find out someone’s a superhero, and it’s even harder if you aren’t one.”

“Yeah.”

“Did he say why?”

She shook her head.  “I would assume it’s some kind of Kwami thing.”

Adrien shrugged.  “Sounds about right.” He paused.  “Huh.”

“What?”

“Now that you say that, I could probably have just asked Plagg.”  They kept walking a bit longer, and then, suddenly, he shook his head.  “I still could!” he looked down.  “Hey Plagg?” he asked, “did you already know all that?”

He could feel the shift under the fabric of his shirt as Plagg slipped to the edge of it, still just out of sight.  “Well, yeah,” came the grating voice, somewhat muffled.  “I mean, if I were you, I’d have been surprised that nobody figured it out _yet_.”

“Real nice, Plagg.”

“Hey! I’m just being honest.  You’re pretty bad at keeping secrets.”

“Leave him alone!” came another voice from Marinette’s direction.  “It’s not like you’re any better at _spotting_ secrets.”

“ _Spotting_ secrets?  Really?”

“That wasn’t a pun,” said Tikki, seemingly the slightest bit annoyed. “and besides, _you’re_ one to talk.  You only figured out who Ladybug really was when she changed back right in front of you.”

Plagg went silent at that, and after a second, Adrien felt him slip back into the inside pocket of the shirt.  He felt, more than heard, the faint grumbling.

“Wow,” he said, “I’ve never seen him just _stop talking_ like that before.”

“We’ve known each other a _long_ time,” said Tikki, as if that was a proper explanation.

“Yeah, and I was just getting used to having her _not_ do that every time I talk.”

“I wouldn’t do it if you didn’t keep needlessly insulting people.”

Their purposeful snail’s pace of a walk had finally lead them to their destination.

The library.  Finally, weeks after her… Ill-fated confession?  Well-fated confession?

 

Fated confession.

 

Anyway, she was back, and with a problem to solve simultaneously far less urgent than a crush, and yet somehow still just as tricky.

It was the end of a semester, which meant semester exams.  More to the point, it meant dealing with the frankly ridiculous matter of science.  Theoretically, it was supposed to be an ordinary, high-school level class, but Ms. Mendeleev had a _reputation._  Namely, a reputation for giving out 7-page study guides where _all_ of the listed material was on the test.  Tiny font, preparing for a test where worse than having to remember all the concepts was trying to write them all in before you ran out of time.

It was, in short, an infamous challenge, to the point that Marinette was almost worried someone would get Evilized just trying to study for it.  She should probably do something to keep people’s spirits up once the test ended.  But for now, she had to make sure that _she_ survived.

To that end, she was going to the peaceful haven of the library, where…

Where…

Where Kim and Alix were screaming review questions at each other.

Marinette shuffled her way into the room, past Nathaniel who was shaking his head as he walked out with a book entitled ‘Paris: The Grandest Sights.’  She slipped into a seat across from Alya, next to Nino.  Both of them seemed enraptured by what appeared to be some kind of academic sparring match.

“Should I be concerned?” she whispered.

Alya looked up, surprised, “What!?  Oh, hey Marinette.  There was an incident with a textbook.  They both wanted the last copy, and somehow they’ve just ended up…” She gestured at the two of them, just as Alix shouted, “Sigma bonds!  Who figured out the periodic table!?”

“Well, like that.”

“Mendeleev! Why is water called the universal solvent!?”

“Oh.  How long have they been doing this?”

Alya shrugged.  “A while.”

“Gotta be like 2 minutes by now,” said Nino, “pretty impressive, honestly.”

“Yeah,” said Alya, “I’m pretty sure they’re remembering things purely out of spite at this point.”  After a second’s intent watching, she added, “I’d break it up, but honestly, I think this is probably better studying than I’d be doing anyway.  Plus, it’s more fun to watch.”

“Yup,” said Nino, nodding.

Marinette looked back up at Adrien, who still hadn’t sat down.  He seemed half-confused, half-pleased.

Nino followed her gaze, and chuckled.  “Guess you probably never saw them do this before,” he said.  When Adrien looked down at him, he continued, “They’ve been stuck in the same class for years now, and I’ve lost track of all the stuff that’s happened.” He looked back at the pair, and shrugged, “Not including the stuff I wasn’t there for.”

“It’s always a competition,” said Alya, “You remember how Kim kept making dares earlier in the year?”

Adrien nodded, eyes once more fixed on pair.

“Well, he’s been doing _basically_ that for years, and nobody’s had to deal with more of it than Alix.”

“It doesn’t help that Alix gets really into it,” added Nino.

“Because the carbon atoms form a network!” shouted Alix.

“Seriously,” said Nino, as Alix cut back with her next question “I’m pretty sure they didn’t know _any_ of this stuff five minutes ago.”  He laughed.  “I wonder what happens if you ask them something weird.”

“Did you have something in mind?” asked Alya.

Nino didn’t hesitate. “You could try asking who Ladybug _really_ is.”

Alya snorted.  “Oh no, you’ve made it relevant to my interests, how can I resist,” she said.

“You can’t,” responded Nino.

“Because parts of it are polar, while other parts are nonpolar!” shouted back Kim.

In the bare pause of him trying to find a new question, Alya called out “What’s Ladybug’s real identity!?”

Alix swung around, and, not even seeming to see Alya, stared _directly_ into Marinette’s eyes. Marinette couldn’t keep the eye contact, gaze flicking around the room.  Nobody else seemed to be looking at her, but it was still uniquely terrifying. “Secretly, Ladybug is-” her voice cut off, even though she seemed to be trying to say something.  “...is-” She shuddered as if about to throw up.  Then, she blinked a few times in rapid succession, and looked up at Alya.

“Nobody knows who Ladybug really is,” she said, shaking her head as if trying to rid her head of the thought, “that’s the whole _point_ of a secret identity.”

“I win!”

“Oh, come on!” shouted Alix, “that’s not how-

“You said first person to get a question wrong _or not know the answer!”_

“Science questions, Kim!  That’s not a science question, and _you_ didn’t ask it anyway!”

“Yeah, well…  Do you smell that?”

“I swear, you’re like some kind of dog; in the middle of talking and then suddenly, ‘Did you smell…’  Actually, yeah, what _is_ that?”

Kim sniffed.  “Smells like alcohol.”

A beep, and then, “Ethanol, to be precise.”  That was Markov’s voice.  “Which is to say, drinking alcohol.”

They looked over.  “Max outfitted me with certain sensors.”

For a second every stood still, hesitantly smelling the air.  “You’re not supposed to drink in school,” said Nino.

“The quantities suggest a much larger source than would be plausibly carried by one person,” said Markov, “considering the concentration and spread.  However, it seems likely that this is not coming from a drink, but from some new villain, considering the oncoming wave of fog outside.”

The looked out the window, and stopped dead.

“Looks like studying’s gonna have to wait,” muttered Adrien.

“As usual,” said Alya.

\--

Okay.  So.  Clearly, she had to get out of here.  Rena Rouge hadn’t been around for the last villain, but she was going to be there _this_ time.

She had to get out of the room, obviously, but how was she supposed to justify it?  Maybe she could just sort of… Sort of… _Edge_ herself back from the group, who were, to… Well, okay, Adrien seemed to be following her lead, which made sense.  Marinette seemed resolutely fixated on the cloud.

“So,” Marinette said quietly to Nino, “looks like a bad day to go driving, I guess.”

Nino laughed, the soft laugh of someone trying to ignore a bad situation.  “Yeah, guess so.”

Just a little more, and… Out.

She closed the door, taking care to avoid it making a sound.

For a second, she was going to say something about covering him while he went and transformed elsewhere, and then she remembered earlier today.  Well.  That would make things simpler.

“Alright,” she said, to Adrien, “time to transform?”

He glanced around.  “Looks clear enough.”

“You ready, Trixx?”

Trixx flitted out, with a wide grin.  “I’ve been ready for weeks!”

“Of course you have,” came a grating voice from Adrien’s direction, just as Adrien himself said, “Plagg, claws out!”

“Let’s pounce!”

…

“Time to get moving,” said Chat Noir.

“We should really figure out a synchronized transformation,” said Rena Rouge, as they jumped an inhuman distance, making for the exit.

“We’ll have to talk about that some other time,” said Chat Noir, “for now, we’ve got a villain to catch.”

\--

Marinette was still making the resolute face of someone pretending not to hear something.  She’d been mid-conversation with Nino, and she could _absolutely_ hear them talking through the door.  Nino didn’t seem to have heard them though, so she supposed the door worked well enough.

The worst part was that that was actually one of the more _secure_ transformations she’d been around for, too, so she didn’t even want to _think_ about all the times she’d transformed with only the hope that people weren’t looking at her.  In the park, behind a bench, for example.  Of course, it helped that even if they saw her, they wouldn’t know they needed to pay attention to her until she was already transformed, but still…

On the upside, though, now that they’d left, she had the perfect reason to leave.

“Hey,” she said, “Did Adrien tell you where he was going?”

“Nah,” said Nino.

“I’d better go find him, then,” she said.

He nodded.  “Cool.”

She walked out the door, and, head full of her own misgivings about obvious places to transform, left to find somewhere better to do it.

\--

Kinda weird that all three of his best friends had pretty much _immediately_ left.  Well, he supposed Marinette had just been following the other two, but _still_.

Chat Noir and Rena Rouge suddenly flew into sight, leaping across the rooftops towards the fog, which was now quite close to the school.  Then, with almost no warning, they hit the impossibly thick surface, and vanished into it without a trace.

Nino had the distinct impression Ladybug would be after them in just a moment.  He blinked.

…

Well… Presumably Marinette would find Alya and Adrien soon enough.  Hopefully they’d be back to the library soon.  In the meantime, though, it wasn’t like he’d be able to fight a villain, and he wasn’t going to do much by watching a massive cloud of fog.

He shrugged and pulled out his textbook.

He was probably going to be stuck here until the fog dispersed, so he might as well fight his way through the increasing smell of alcohol and get studying.

\--

The fog was even more unnatural than she’d thought; it seemed to be shoving its way through the cracks in the door, thick billows of the stuff quickly obscuring the entry to the school.  Even as she hesitantly stepped up to open the door, she was quickly engulfed in it.  She turned to look back, but even as she looked, the view grew hazier.

She took a deep breath, trying not to choke on the now pervasive taste in the air, and opened the door.

 

The fog, which seemed to have been pressing at the door, rushed in all at once, and she stepped through quickly and closed the door behind her.  It made no sense to let it spread that easily, _whatever_ it did.

Was the school engulfed yet?  She didn’t know.  She couldn’t see all of it.  She could barely see to the rooftop.

Now, where were her friends?

\--

Chat Noir was quietly regretting not waiting up for Ladybug.  It would have been easy; just get to a nearby rooftop to talk strategy, and make sure Rena Rouge was faced away from the school.  Ladybug would show up, and they’d be able to take on the villain together.

This?  This was a bad idea.

He kept almost losing track of the one hero who _had_ come with him, and if he lost her for longer, there wouldn’t be much he could do to _find_ her.

Right now, though, they were back to back, simply staring out into the void.  There had been nothing to suggest the villain; no appearance, no telltale marks to suggest a source.  The fog simply _was_.

He supposed the villain could _be_ the fog?  Maybe they were standing _inside_ of it.

That was an unpleasant thought, and besides, Hawkmoth wouldn’t make a villain who couldn’t…

He swatted away the…   Strange.  He could’ve sworn he’d felt something tugging on his ring, but when he’d looked down, nothing.

“Hey,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Stay sharp.  Something weird’s going on.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” “I mean something tried to steal my ring.”

He felt her head jerk as she looked over at him. “What?”

“I don’t know.”

\--

She was about to ask him what he meant, when something was _there_ in the corner of her eye, long, almost snakelike.  Without thinking, she reached out and snagged it in her left hand.

It was… A hand?  A hand of mist, with a foggy arm stretching away behind it, but perfectly solid.  Even as she processed that she could touch it, it crushed in her hand, turning into nothing but a loose cloud.  The arm, too, dispersed into the mist.

Eerie.

“What?”  Right.  He must have felt her do something, side-effects of being back to back…

Back to back.  If someone had told her a year ago that in a year she’d be back to back with a superhero named Chat Noir, _as another superhero_ , and that Chat Noir would be the famous model Adrien Agreste, who would also be her classmate, and practically her high-school brother-in-law...  Well, she wouldn’t have believed them.  She would have thought they were crazy.

But he’d asked a question.  “There are hands in the fog.”

“What!?”

“One hand, anyway.”

“Just floating?”

“There was an arm.”

“No body?”

“Not in sight.  It was a _long_ arm _.”_

Her eyes twitched side to side, trying to catch the next one before it caught her.

“When you say long arm, you mean, what, tube of fog?”

“Yeah?”

“Figured,” she felt him move, as if he’d just caught one of his own.  “Turns to mist if you grab it?”

“Yup.”

“Yeah…  How much would you bet that if we follow the arms we find the villain?”

She felt a faint pressure on the back of her neck, and the soft shift of the pendant in her necklace.  She spun and caught the hand that had managed to sneak itself into the gap between her head and Chat Noir’s.

Sure enough, as her eyes followed the disintegration, she saw that the arm snaked off in the same general direction as the first one.

“Alright,” she said, “be ready, then.”

“Ready for…?”

“Hand!” she called, and started after the arm.

\--

“Wait, you can’t-“ he began, but she was already too far away to hear.

He brought down a hand and chopped the arm out of existence.  Great.  Now, _none_ of them were in the same place.  Rena Rouge, running off by herself, and _he_ couldn’t follow, because…  What?  He was waiting for Ladybug, but what made it so certain that she’d come _here?_

He needed to…  Oh.  He rubbed his eyes.  He would’ve sworn he wasn’t tired, but his eyes were burning in this miasma, and the smell wasn’t helping either.  Still, if nothing else, he could at least arrange some kind of meeting.

He pulled out his baton and flicked it open.

For a long second, she didn’t respond, and then, her face appeared, surrounded by fog.

“Hey, we need to meet up,” he said, looking up at the street signs, “I’m at the corner of-

“I think we’ve got that just about covered,” she said, and he heard the same voice coming from behind him.

He spun around.  She was already there.

He blinked at her.

She smirked at him, and turned the compact around.  “Tracking, remember?” she said.

He stared blankly for an instant, and then said, “Of course!  Of course, I just thought… It would be more _fun_ to try meeting up with conventional directions.  Call me a traditionalist, I guess.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Kitty,” she said, and then blinked. “Where’s Rena?”

“You tell me,” he said, nodding at her hand.

“You got split up?”

“She ran off.”

“Why?” “Chasing an arm,” he said, and then, at her confused look, “I should probably just take it from the top.”

\--

Man, Marinette really was taking a _long_ time to come back with Alya and Adrien.

Of course, the villain could have kidnapped them or something, but he was forcing himself not to dwell on that option.  Maybe they’d just gotten turned around in the mist that had finally filled up the school. However much he wanted to go looking for them, what would he be able to do that they hadn’t?  It was just like the time with Banshee; all he could do was hold out and try to stay out of trouble.

_Except_ , muttered a bit of his mind, _with Banshee,_ Alya _had stayed behind, and saved Marinette and Adrien, and_ he’d _run._

And what would have changed if he’d stayed behind?  It had been _his_ idea to take everyone to the library, and they’d _listened._   If he’d stayed, would they have stayed safe?

He blinked away the tears that were only _mostly_ from the burn in the air.  And what was he supposed to do now?  His friends were out there, potentially in danger, and he was stuck in here, unable to move, and useless even if he could.

He put down the pencil he’d had out and sat up.  There was no use dwelling on it.  Never was.

He looked around the room.  Alix and Kim, (he assumed they were, by their silhouettes) for all they’d been yelling at each other earlier, had sat down at the same table.  Neither was talking, and both seemed unnerved.

Well.  If he couldn’t go looking for his other friends, he could at least look out for the ones _here_.

He picked up his textbook and walked over to the table.

They looked up as he approached.

He gave them his best reassuring smile and sat down.

“There’s still enough light to study by,” he said.

Alix gave him a funny look.  “You really want to study _now?_ ”

He shrugged.  “What else are we supposed to do?  It’s not like we can go fight whatever villain’s out there…  Besides, Miss Mendeleev’s never gonna move the test back for a villain.”

Kim snorted.  “Yeah.”

“Hey, Max, Markov,” he called, “you want in on this?”

\--

Halfway sharing the senses of a villain as strange and nebulous as this one was a new experience for him.  He could see practically the whole city, and, at first, he’d thought that would mean he’d be guaranteed to see Ladybug and Chat Noir transform, uncovering their secret identities once and for all, but no such luck.  He’d only managed to spot them _after_ they’d already been up and away over the rooftops.  Still, they’d have quite a time fighting when they could barely see, and, judging by the stench of the fog, were slowly growing intoxicated.

Better still, their newest member, Rena Rouge, had split off by herself, heading straight for the most dangerous place in Paris.  Right into the waiting arms of Fog.  With any luck, the Fox Miraculous at least would be his, crippling his enemies.

Hmm.  He might actually know just the person to wield it.  But first…

\--

She’d realized _after_ Chat Noir was far behind her that he wasn’t following her.  She wanted to stop then and there, but the way the arm had curled and twisted across the rooftops, she didn’t think she’d be able to trace her path back.  So the only paths available were to stay where she was, and keep pushing on.  Well.  Foxes were supposed to be hunters, right, and she was going to follow this rabbit of a villain back to its burrow.

_Not_ , she continued as she kept following, _that this was as_ harmless _as a rabbit.  Plus, the metaphors,_ inside _her own head, seemed a little over the top.  Call that an aesthetic failure, but it didn’t change the fact that she wasn’t about to sit around and wait for it to eventually succeed at its persistent attempts at theft._

And so, she went on, barely able to keep up with the hand that seemed always one rooftop further, until finally, the winding path led her to… An alley?  Well, she’d come this far.  It was just one, two, _three_ jumps to the bottom.

She straightened up, and immediately knew that she was in the right place.  The air was thick, even choking, and the cloud was so thick here that she could see 20 feet, _maybe_.  No villain in sight, but she knew it had to be here somewhere.  She carefully looked around.  It _could_ be outside the alley, somewhere, or it could be tiny.  Camouflaged?  Probably not invisible, or else why go to the trouble of covering things in fog.

Something in her head clicked.  A flicker in the fog.  Not a shape; a wisp of the same, but even thicker, almost solid.

She stepped lightly towards the source, and finally came close enough that she could make out a shape on the ground, small enough to hold in a hand.  It was a metallic grey, with an opening on one end, that was billowing, surprise, _more fog._

This had to be the thing they had to destroy, right? 

Oh, who was she kidding? This was _obviously_ the source of the whole cloud, for all it was tiny.  Well, for all it was a poor choice to run off alone, if she could get this back to Ladybug, it would be game over, no _problem_.

She reached down and… Hesitated.  It was strange that no villain had shown up, yet.  Would something happen if she touched this?  Maybe she should wait for Ladybug and Chat Noir to… But then, how would they find her with no directions?

Maybe, though, she could set up a meeting.  That would be perfect.

She pulled her flute out.

She knew that Ladybug and Chat Noir could _both_ communicate through their respective weapons, but it took her a second to figure out how _hers_ did it.

Eventually, she hesitantly blew a note, and saw a flicker in the air.  A few notes more, and then a few more, and one decisive _tweet_ , and an image of the same phone her _phone_ used to say ‘call this number?’ was floating in the air, buzzing slightly.  Holographic screen?  Well, probably, it was more of a mirage, technically, but she had to admit, she’d found something she had up on the two of them, albeit with a terrible interface.

After a second, an oddly three-dimensional image of the two appeared in the air, on eye-level with her, and yet looking down, as if at the screen.  It was disconcerting, but she rallied quickly and said, “Where are you two?”

“We’re on our way,” said Ladybug.

She wanted to ask how, but the _important_ point to make was, “I’m not seeing a villain, but I’ve got the Akumatized item.”

“What?” said Chat Noir.

“How?” asked Ladybug.

Rena grins.  “It’s right here,” she said, unthinkingly stepping towards it, “just lying on the ground!” Her hand wrapped around it, and-

\--

-there was a loud _hiss_ , and her image went white, and then cut out entirely.

They looked at each other, back at the screen, and then back in the direction they’d been heading.  Then, without a word, they began sprinting forward, Ladybug trying to switch back to the tracker as she ran.

The same fog they’d been cutting through easily before suddenly seemed much more difficult to navigate as they tried to hurry their progress to the small blip on Ladybug’s compact that was supposed to represent their friend.  Rooftops loomed out of nowhere, and more than once they stumbled as one suddenly rose up beneath them at an unexpected angle.

But they were close, close enough that by the time she had the map back up, they’d almost passed their stop.

“Here!” she called, and Chat Noir almost fell again as he tried to negate his momentum.

As he brought himself back up, he looked back up at her.  She nodded at the gap between the two buildings.

She brought up a hand.  3 fingers.  2.  1.

They jumped down.

\--

“I guess you’re right,” he said, trying to get the cord of the necklace out from under her hair, “but you’d have to take it up with… With.  What was his name, again?”

He didn’t have a chance to complete the thought, as his body exploded, with a sudden impact of something in his back.

He clenched his hand around the flask, and he was back, again, on the ground.  He looked up, and saw two figures standing over the other one; one red, one black.

_‘Like checkers’_ he thought vaguely, before recalling what the purple guy had said.  These were the two he had to beat, right?  Didn’t sound like fun.  The red one was kneeling down over her friend, and the black one was charging him.

“CATACLYSM!”

He forced himself to focus.  He pushed up to his knees as fast as he could, but by then the… Chat Noir.  That was the name of the one who said ‘Cataclysm’ and then destroyed things.  Chat Noir was already almost on him, reaching for the flask.  He couldn’t let him take it.  He knew that much.

A snap-toss between his legs, and his last image was Chat Noir’s confused expression, and then he was gone.

And back, hand clenched on the metal surface of the flask.  Chat Noir was behind him, and probably was going to-

\--

They spun at the same moment, and Chat Noir had the barest instant to see the open end of what he had to assume was a can of some kind pointed at him before his vision went white, and everything _burned._   He slammed his eyes shut and covered his mouth, trying not to breathe.

Then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone, and he forced his eyes open in time to see that same indistinct, grey figure rushing for him.  He put up an arm and blocked its clumsy strike, but still staggered.

It didn’t hurt, but it _pushed_ , as if his own blocks weren’t as effective.

Well, it could push, so could he.

His vision was beginning to blur, now, as if his eyes had forgotten how to focus.  He made a weak grab for the thing it was holding and earned a punch to the gut for his trouble.  He grinned despite himself, even as he took a knee to the gut and fell back.

“I don’t need to win,” he slurred, “I just need to buy _her_ time.”

And then the blinding white returned, and he realized an instant before he passed out that he’d forgotten to close his mouth.

\--

As the energy jolted into her abdomen, Rena Rouge sat bolt upright, eyes wide.

“I didn’t know you could do that!” she said, quickly pulling her necklace back down where it belonged.

“Well, the time’s up,” came the faint voice from behind Ladybug, and chuckled.  It didn’t even sound evil, just a bit amused.

She spun around.  “ _Oh not again,”_ she muttered, a hard edge in her voice.  Rena leaned to the side.  The Fog-man had managed to bring down Chat Noir, and more to the point, had taken hold of his hand and was, using the hand that wasn’t holding the item, twisting at the ring.

The yo-yo had to be second nature by now, and this strike was particularly savage, causing Fog to jolt upright, even as it passed through him.  He spun, hand still working at the ring, and she thought the twists in the mutable face look almost scared.

“Now’d be a good time for a Lucky Charm,” said Rena.

“I think I just used up all of my power,” she said, shaking her head and sending another strike out, this one aimed at the villain’s hand.

“Don’t let him level the flask at you!” Rena called at her retreating back.

“Got it!” she called, and then, “Cover me!”

Well, with her mind recovered from what she could only assume was a forcible intoxication, she might just be able to make a proper illusion.

But what kind?  This was a halfway intelligent enemy, which limited her scope.  No grand illusions for this.  Surely there was something, though.

\--

She was faster than him, and probably stronger, too, but her real advantage was knowing to never let it level that flask at her.  She’d bet, easily, that that was what had done in Chat Noir.  Well, he wasn’t going to get _her._

One, two, knock the hand, a clip of the ankle with her foot, just enough to throw him off balance, and he was in perfect position for her to-

A twitch, and she was back ten feet, her mouth in her elbow, carefully exhaling through her nose, eyes squinted to avoid the burn.

As the choking stream finally died, she forced her eyes open again, and pushed forward again, trying not to wonder why Rena hadn’t used her Mirage yet.

There was a timing on that attack, or else he’d always be using it.  That meant she’d have to move fast or she’d get pushed back again.  Which meant…

She pushed onwards.  A feint towards his face, a slide in, hip check, hand darting out toward the flask, but he pulled back, his whole body turning away.  An awkward kick, slipping past his ghostly body, and knocking it into the air.

She leaped for the flask, only barely noticing Fog’s body disintegrate.  What she _did_ notice was when his body formed, hand first, around the flask, back to her.

Her jump was abruptly halted by the surprisingly solid form of the villain going _downwards_.  She managed to extricate herself from underneath him, and barely managed to cover her face as another choking blast whited out her vision.

No, it was worse.  Her vision was unnaturally blurred, and she felt only somewhat steadier on her feet than Marinette, not that she wasn’t always Marinette, but right now, she was supposed to-  she shook off the tangent, just in time to hear a familiar melody.  She grinned.  Rena had figured out what she was doing.

\--

Once or twice, before he’d been a villain, (which, he supposed, he was, now) he’d experienced the tricky sensation of seeing double, but he’d never seen triple?  Quadruple?  The point was he was suddenly dealing with a lot more Ladybug than usual, and he wasn’t sure why.

_“Rena Rouge has used her Mirage,”_ came an echo from the fog.  It was the same voice he’d heard when he’d first transformed.  ‘ _If you can incapacitate her again, the_ fakes _will vanish.’_

“Well, that’s cool, man, but I don’t know exactly-“ he quickly formed again, and barely managed to slide the flask away across the pavement, “how you expect me-“ he reformed again, and began running, “to do anything with that when I’d have to get past an invisible girl with a vendetta first.”

“ _Invisible,”_ repeated the voice, clearly not understanding him.

“Y’know,” he said, his torso bursting into mist as the yo-yo around it suddenly tightened into nothing, “I can’t tell which one she is, so… invisible.”

_“Then take the ring, if nothing else!”_

He rolled the eyes he didn’t really have, due to being made of fog, and turned.

“Alright, man, you’re the boss,” he said, and flicked the flask underhand under what he had to assume was the real Ladybug diving at him.

He never found out if she was real, as he was already running back towards Chat Noir.

“Oh yeah ‘Take the ring,’ like that’s so easy,” he muttered.  “Almost enough to make me feel an _emotion_.”  He knelt down by Chat Noir, right hand poised like before, carefully avoiding touching the palm where the Cataclysm was still crackling.  The ring was past the first knuckle now, but the leather of- leather?  Material, let’s say, of the suit, gripped unnaturally hard.  One good _wrench_ , though, would probably-

He just _barely_ had time to register the pressure of the yo-yo’s cord at his left shoulder, and even less to register the contact it made with the hand holding the flask.

\--

At this distance, she could just make out the flask bounce, and only knew that she’d managed to hit Chat Noir’s still burning hand when, in midair, the flask crumbled to dust

“Sick shot,” came the trailing voice of Fog, as his body disintegrated.

And then, _didn’t_ disintegrate, reforming, stronger, stronger, a vicious wind whipping as the fog twisted back to him.

She could see the Akuma at this distance, struggling against the current.

A flip of the compact, and- a miss.

Another flip.

And another.

It was on the fourth try she finally caught it.

“Not too bad, all things considered,” she muttered. Considering the size of the target, the wind, the intoxication, and the fact that she was trying to do something precise immediately after a literal _fight_.

This wind would probably keep going and start a tornado or something similarly destructive if she didn’t do something.  Thankfully, she could…

Well, she didn’t have a lucky charm, but hopefully, she’d still be able to…

“Miraculous Ladybug!” she called out, and felt the power surge out, blinding.

When it was gone, everything was quiet again.  The day was warm and sunny, and above all, felt impossibly real.  Maybe it was the contrast with the fog, maybe it was the fact that she wasn’t half- _drunk_ anymore.  Did it even count as being drunk if she hadn’t drunk anything?

Her earrings beeped, and she remembered what she was doing.

She reached down a hand, and pulled up Chat Noir, who seemed to be shaking off the intoxication, but not immediately.

He pushed up to his feet and nodded silently at her.

Now, she was low on time, and she couldn’t let Rena Rouge see her entering the school without raising too many questions

\--

“Did you know she has healing powers?” was his first reminder that Rena existed.

“I,” he said, blinking at the suddenness.  He looked up at her.  “No, I didn’t. Shouldn’t be surprised, though, creation’s her whole thing.”

“Well, yeah, but I never realized you had more than one power!”

“Well, I suppose the upside to rushing off like that is that you find out.”

She cringed back, slightly.  “Yeah, guess I did a bit, didn’t I.”

He shrugged.  “You’re still pretty new to this.”  He looked away, “Not to mention that I’ve gotten taken down more times than I want to remember because I did something stupid.  _Anyway_ , I need to get back to school, and you’re low on time too.  Make sure he’s okay, and then keep following, alright?”

“Make sure…” she began, and then seemed to register the civilian who’d been left behind.  “Yeah,” she said, and he set off, back towards the school.

\--

Rena Rouge, left on civilian maintenance.  She wondered if it was because everyone else was out of time, or because she was the newest, or because... Well, if nothing else, she had _experience_ talking to people she didn’t know, being halfway a reporter already.

“Hey,” she said, kneeling down beside the stubbled, blinking man.

“Hey,” he said, looking around.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.  Yeah, I just…  It was a hell of a night.  Said a few things… A _lot_ of things I’m gonna regret.” He paused, and sighed deeply.  “That I _do_ regret.  I’ve got a _lot_ of people to apologize to.” He looked down at the flask in his hand, and shook his head.  “And this, I think,” he said, standing up, “is going in the garbage.”

He started walking away, seeming almost steady on his feet now.  “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll be fine, just got some stuff to do.”

And that was it.  That was making sure the civilian was alright.

Well, good that it was done, because by now, she really _was_ running low on time, and she was a significant distance from the school.

Time to get gone.

\--

“No, it’s all about ratios,” said Kim, “you don’t even have to calculate the whole thing, if you just compare the percentages of what changed, and you divide the one by the other, and _boom_ , you’re done!”

“You realize that was entirely incomprehensible, right?” said Alix

“Assuming I understand him, though, he _is_ entirely correct,” said Max.

Nino leaned back in his chair, a gentle smile on his face.  All things considered, that had been the most productive villain attack he’d ever had, _and_ , if he had to guess, his other friends would probably be returning sooner rather-

“Oh, hey Marinette!” he called, as she awkwardly shuffled through the door, “did you manage to find Adrien and Alya?”

“Ah, no,” she called back, “I just, um, got caught up in the fog, and figured I’d be better off getting out of the halls.  Never know if a villain’s going to come to the school.”

“Y’know, normally, I’d call you paranoid,” said Alix, “but there _have_ been a _lot_ of villains that targeted the school.”

“Correct,” said Max.  “I had Markov check the numbers.  By area, this school has the highest density of Akuma attacks, just barely outpacing the Agreste Manor.  Le Grand Paris, in terms of horizontal area, is a close contender, simply because it’s so much taller than it is wide, but it falls flat when you consider how many floors it has.”

“You seriously go around calculating this stuff?”

He shrugged.  “It’s proven to be relaxing.”

“It doesn’t worry you that you’re constantly in the Akuma hotbed?”

“At least I _know_ about it.”

“Adrien!” called Nino, “You had us worried there, man!  Now we’re just waiting on Alya.”

“I think she’s on her way,” he said, with a friendly wave as he walked over.

“Sweet.  Too bad you guys missed the study session.”

“Missed it?”

“Yeah, we did it while you guys were out.”

“During the attack?”

“I mean… Yeah, what else were we supposed to do?”

Adrien stopped.  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.  I just hope you can split me off some of that hard-earned study knowledge.”

Nino grinned.  “Can do.”

And there, finally, was Alya, rushing in, almost out of breath.

“Easy, babe, we’re all fine!”

She looked up, hair a gorgeous mess, and smiled.  He never got tired of that smile.

“Good to hear,” she said.

“Alright,” he said to the three he’d been sitting with.  “Attack’s over, everyone’s accounted for, great work team, right?”

“Right!” said Kim.

“Now,” he continued, “I’ve just got to teach _these_ three academic layabouts some _science._ ”

Alya had her lips pursed as she looked at him, trying her best to look annoyed, but he could still see the smile peeking through.

\--

They sat in their rooms.

This certainly qualified as a ‘Kwami Thing,’ which he could probably ask Plagg about.

“I have some questions,” he said, pulling out a wedge of cheese.

“I’m listening.”

 

“How did I do that,” she asked. “I know that when Switch attacked, we were in the wrong bodies, with the wrong tools, so having our powers changed made sense, but this was just, _me_ , normal me- not normal, I mean, but normal _Ladybug_.”

Tikki laughed.  “Marinette, you’ve only just _begun_ to find out what you’re capable of!  Your Lucky Charm is powerful, but it’s not even the most common ability I’ve seen people learn!  There are so many others!”

 

“But _you’re_ the one who told me how to use Cataclysm!” he said, “did Cataclysm do something different when other Chat Noir’s used it? Like it did when Silencer attacked?”

“What? No, that’d be stupid,” said Plagg, through a mouthful of cheese.  “It’s just a feeling you get.  Cataclysm’s easy enough for someone as young as you are, if you’re careful with it.  You didn’t seem like you were going to go around blowing stuff up for no reason.  Now, if I’d thought you were too unstable for it, I might have told you about _Frenzy_ , or something a bit less lethal.”

 

“Renewal?  Is that what it’s called?”

“Of course!  I’d have told you sooner, but it can be _very difficult_ for the wielder of a Miraculous to keep more than one ability in their mind at once, so I wanted to wait until you’d discovered it by yourself.”

 

“Does Master Fu know about these?”

“Eh, probably.  He knows about a lot of stuff, but I think he likes leaving this side of things up to us.  Honestly, that’s good, since he’s only ever used the _Turtle_ Miraculous.  Not easy to train someone with a Miraculous you haven’t used, _believe me_.  Whole different feeling, and I’ve seen people forget about that _way_ too often.”

 

“Then, it’s not just me.  Chat Noir has them too, and Rena Rouge?”

“There are variations on _every_ Miraculous, but some are more versatile than others.  The Ladybug and Cat Miraculous’ are among the most versatile.  Rena Rouge has a few options, but nothing quite like the two of you.”

“Marinette?  Are you talking to someone up there?”

“Just myself!” she called back, lying almost more smoothly than she felt comfortable with.

“Alright, honey.  Dinner’s almost ready, okay?”

 

“And what do you want to bet _Gabey_ isn’t going to be there tonight.”

“He might be,” Adrien responded, giving Plagg a sidelong look for the vitriol with which he’d said the nickname.

“Alright, Mister Optimism,” cut back Plagg, and sighed.  “One of these days, you’re going to figure out how he operates.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Featuring a staggering 27 uses of the word 'fog,' 5 of 'cloud' and 6 of 'mist.' A few synonyms that captured the same feeling would be much appreciated.
> 
> Next time: An incredibly close race brings a runner into easy striking distance for Hawkmoth. In the end, though none of our heroes know it yet, it is not the fight itself that will have the greatest impact on their lives.


	3. Replay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When a runner loses a race by a margin too close to bear, Hawkmoth finds the perfect prey for his Akuma, and creates the blazingly fast menace, Replay.

“Ohhhhh! The first lap always goes by in a flash, doesn’t it!” said Alya in her best announcer voice.

“Sure does,” said Nino, laughing, but still trying to match her intensity, “and it looks like 37 holding a narrow lead, on the second straightaway of lap two.” “But with 12 coming up behind him, can he maintain that lead?  12’s closing the gap!”

Nino grinned, as his eyes flicked from the screen to the phone, whose caller ID informed him once more that Alya Cesaire was on the other end.

“It’s gonna be close!” he called out.

It was.  Close enough neither of them could tell for certain.

“We’ll need to get a replay on that,” he said, even as the screen switched obligingly to the slo-mo camera.

“Absolutely, a stellar game of catch-up from 12 there, but we have to be sure; did he make it?”

Both were quiet as the slow-motion reaches the fatal moment of the two crossing the line.  Close.  _Very_ close.  In the end, though, the statistic pops up on the screen.

“Oh, and the win goes to 12, by the slim margin of .06 seconds!” He said.

“Right you are, and if you’ll look closely, you’re see that while 37 was _exceptionally_ close, a slip-up with his arms meant that he hit the finish line just a _fraction_ of a second too late, while 12 had absolutely flawless armwork.”

He paused.  “Armwork?  Is that what you’d actually call it.”

He could almost hear her shrug.  “I mean, what would you call it?”

“…  Well, I guess armwork works as well as anything.”

“See, I knew you’d see it my way.”

He rolled his eyes, even as the grin stayed on his face.  “One of these days, you’re gonna be wrong, and then where will that confidence leave you?”

“I don’t understand the first part of the question,” she said.

He laughed.  “Alright.”

“So, next event coming up is the 1 kilo run.”

“Oh, sweet,” he said, “should give us a bit more to work with.” “My thoughts exactly… Oh.  Oh no.”

“What?”

“Look at the screen.”

He did.  Number 37, screaming in the face of…  Was that his coach?  Did runners _have_ coaches?  Certainly, he was screaming, brandishing a stopwatch in the man’s face.  Then, just as quickly as he’d snapped, security came and forcibly escorted him away.

“You reckon he’s going to be… Okay?”

Both of them knew what ‘okay’ meant here.  “I’m sure he’ll get a hold of himself before anything can… Happen.”

\--

“An athlete separated from his well-deserved victory by such a _slim margin_.  Perhaps he would like the opportunity to turn that margin to his advantage.  Perhaps you should go check, my little Akuma.”

\--

The 1 kilo race was well underway when things went predictably wrong.

A burning, red blur zipped across the track, and the camera went dead.

“Well,” said, Nino, trying not to let the worry he was feeling slip into his voice, “I guess he _wasn’t_ okay.”

Alya swore quietly on the other end, and the line went dead.

“Alya?” he said, already knowing that she was gone.

Huh.

He wanted to call her, but it had sounded like _she’d_ hung up.  Had something come up?

He leaned back, and sighed.  Something weird was going on, no doubt about it, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out _what_.  He looked down at his phone, and _stared._   Alya was _offline._

She was _never_ offline.  She didn’t always respond immediately, but she was always _online_ , at least.

\--

Alya wasn’t there, anymore.  It had taken her all of fifteen seconds to text Adrien that there was an Akuma, and where, and call out to Trixx.

“Let’s pounce!” she called, hoping her siblings wouldn’t hear.  They hadn’t yet, and with luck, never would.

As she practically _flew_ out of the window, she wondered whether it would be an option to transform midway through a dive, but decided against it.  For one thing, she didn’t have an extendible weapon, which meant one bad jump and Rena would be a splatter on the pavement.  The idea made her shudder, even as she took a jump that _would_ have been certain death for Alya.

\--

So, Alya was missing.  That wasn’t good.  Of course, she was more than capable of keeping herself safe, even _if_ she kept rushing after villains to get more footage for the Ladyblog, but to have her just vanish like that...  There was no way to keep himself from worrying.

But worrying wouldn’t do any good, would it.  What _might_ help would be calling a friend.  He pulled his phone back up and scrolled to Adrien…

Who, even as he looked, went offline.

No way.

\--

Adrien wasn’t there.  It had taken him all of twenty seconds to text Marinette that there was an Akuma, and where, and call out to Plagg.

“I hadn’t even _started on my aaAAHH-“_   began Plagg as he was sucked into the ring.

Chat Noir was in his element, once again.  Sure, having to fight villains that could hurt the city was never good, but being Chat Noir? That was better.

\--

His girlfriend and his best friend had both gone offline simultaneously.

Well, Marinette knew both of them really well, so maybe she…

Was offline too.

\--

Marinette wasn’t there.  She didn’t have anyone to text, which meant she had gone from scrolling through the infinite depths of the internet to her roof in no time flat.

Tikki had just given her an approving nod as she’d looked at her, the silent question of ‘You ready?’ obvious. 

And just like that Ladybug was on her way to save the day.

\--

His fingers were faintly twitching, his eyes closed.  It was like trying to solve a math problem in his head.  He could feel the energy of his Akuma, twisting through his villain, and even though there wasn’t anything physically there, he almost felt like he could touch it, reshape it.

In the observatory, a grin slowly widened on Hawkmoth’s face.

This was going to be interesting.

\--

She took in the scene.  It was obvious who the villain was.  He was the one moving almost too fast to track, in the bright red running suit, with the stopwatch (which she’d wager held the akuma) in his hand.  The strangest part, though, wasn’t his speed.  It was the way he blurred.  She’d swear it wasn’t a trick of her eyes; he was actually _blurring,_ as if he was following himself.

She wanted to wait for Ladybug and Chat Noir; she wasn’t good in a straight fight.

But there were civilians down there who needed help, and _she_ was the only one here to help them. She leapt.

\--

Well.  If he’d run like _this_ during the race, he would have won easily.  But he hadn’t.  And _that_ was the issue that, presumably, Hawkmoth would fix for him as soon as he took those Miraculous.  In the meantime, though, everyone who hadn’t taken his side during his dispute (Which was to say, everyone in the stands) was going to get a bruising.

A grin painted his face.  This was the perfect thing to occupy him while he waited, and he hadn’t even had to use his _real_ powers.

“Hey!” came a shout from his left.

One final punch as he rushed by, and he skidded to a halt.  He looked into the field, and his eyes focused on an orange figure.  Hawkmoth had told him about this one.  Rena Rouge.  She was good for one Mirage, and then not much more.  He rubbed his finger on the button of the stopwatch, and grinned.

\--

He leaped onto one of the bleacher seats, still grinning, and just stared for a second.

Goal one, complete; attention acquired.

In a blur, he was moving.  She leapt to the side and felt the twist in the wind from his speed, inhuman, but not impossible. She spun to face him, only to find the back of his fist slamming into her face.

She staggered back, but still took another glancing strike before escaping his reach.

He skidded to a halt, and turned, still with that same malicious smile on his face, to charge her again.

Her odds of winning the fight were slim, but that was fine.  She didn’t need to win.  She just needed to delay until Ladybug and Chat Noir arrived.  _He_ was on the timer, not her.  (In more ways than one)

She dove to the side, dodging another rush, and popped back up.

_This_ time, she saw it; He _bounced_.  He’d been running past her, and then he was moving backwards at full speed, as if he’d bounced off an invisible wall.  He spun, trying to regain his balance, and twisted his course towards her.

She slipped to the side again, and another dive as he reversed. Maybe this was the _real_ Reverser, she thought through gritted teeth as she narrowly avoided another strike.

She put some distance between them, and stood facing him.

He charged.

There was always a second where he had to turn around when he reversed.  If she was lucky, she could exploit that.

She sidestepped.

All she’d have to do was-

She stepped behind him, and leveled a punch at his retreating… Approaching back.

He spun, and rammed his face into her fist.  She barely had time to register her satisfaction before the rest of him collided with her, sending them both flying backwards.

And then he pulled away, reversed again, and skidded to a halt, even as she did.

_Classic_ superheroes.  Felt like a proper showdown.

He straightened up, and looked at her, and grinned.

She was starting to hate that grin.  He didn’t smirk, or smile, really.  It was always _just_ a grin.

He charged.

She stepped to the side, just like before.  If he _wanted_ to take another hit the same way again, that was fine by her.

The fist hit her from the wrong direction, and she was _really_ starting to get sick of not seeing _what_ he’d done to make things happen.  Every time she missed it, it seemed to get her punched.

Then, a grab at her neck; more specifically, her necklace.  Fine.  She could slow that down with her own grab, and in the meantime?   That watch was _hers_. See if he could get her Miraculous to Hawkmoth when he was already defeated.

She managed to snag his hand, and was just maneuvering around to grab the watch when he jerked his arm away and clicked one of the buttons.

His hand wasn’t on the necklace, and she wasn’t near the watch.

In the instant she registered that, he’d already leveled another strike at her, which she only just managed to deflect.

She needed _space,_ or else this would just turn into a fistfight (bad) against an enemy she didn’t know the capabilities of (worse).

She jumped back.

Now, if Ladybug and Chat Noir could show up, maybe she could have a chance against-

She grinned as the pair of them landed.

Their enemy was surrounded.

\--

From the observatory, Hawkmoth could see everything.

“Attack _Ladybug_ ,” he muttered, “she won’t stand a _chance_ if you get close enough.”

And Replay went.

He saw the remarkable turn of speed he built up, even over such a short distance.  He saw Ladybug try to block on instinct.  He saw her block fail to connect as Replay struck her just a fraction of a second too late, and then again, again, again, almost too fast for the human eye to register.  Hawkmoth grinned.  .06 seconds didn’t mean much to the average person, but at these speeds, being where you were .06 seconds ago meant, what, a half-meter?  And doubled? Tripled?  They would have a time keeping a handle on him, and he would have no trouble striking several times every time he found an opening.  All he needed now was the ability to reverse his momentum, if only because turning at those speeds was nigh-impossible.

Hawkmoth grinned a bit wider.  Wouldn’t that just be a lovely idea to have had when he was creating this villain.  Or rather, _hadn’t_ it been.

Seconds went past, a blur of motion.  Even if they were to win, by some miraculous chance, Ladybug was bound to have bruises, even when she detransformed; Chat Noir, try though he might, couldn’t quite seem to keep up in melee with Replay, and Rena Rouge seemed almost shell-shocked, muttering to herself from where she’d been knocked by a particularly vicious punch.

And for every trick they learned to avoid, Replay had another.

Ladybug would wrap him up; he’d suddenly be outside the wires.  Chat Noir would knock him away, and he’d be back just as fast.  He was fast enough to ricochet between them, leaving neither of them time to react.

And when they were bruised and tired, his villain would still have energy to spare, and a free hand to snag a Miraculous or three.

In fact, everything was going well, until Rena Rouge stood up.

\--

“Mirage!”

Replay looked up, momentarily stopping his assault on her friends.

He began running, but it was too late.  In a flash of light, the field was full of sheet metal walls.

By the time he’d realized, he’d already passed through enough to know that they weren’t real.  It didn’t matter, though; her plan was already in progress.

She dove away from him and was gone into the maze before he could follow her.  Now, if she could just keep him running…

She leapt above the maze, and grinned at the sight of Ladybug and Chat Noir getting to their feet.

“Guys,” she said in a half-whisper as she landed, “I’ve got this, I just need Ladybug to wrap him up.”

Ladybug shook her head.  “Won’t he just jump out of it?”

“Not if he hasn’t moved in too long.” she said, “trust me.  When the Mirage drops, be ready.”

“Alright,” said Ladybug.

“Hey!  Over here!” shouted Rena Rouge, leaping away.  “Nice, easy to grab Miraculous, right over here!”

\--

She slipped and dodged, always just in sight, but never quite in reach.  And all the reverses in the world couldn’t help him if he couldn’t see her.

And then, as suddenly as the maze had appeared, he’d followed her to a straightaway.  For a second, he paused, and then started forward again.  Something was clearly going on, but the longer he waited, the more chance she’d have to take advantage of whatever she was doing.

Before he’d even gotten close she’d leaped over the wall to her right.  In his head, he could see exactly where she’d land, and if he was fast, he could hit her as she landed.

He accelerated, and bent his path left, through the-

His vision blacked out for an instant, with a catastrophic _clang._

Then, he was on the ground.  The Mirage was gone.  The stands that surrounded the track were dented where he’d rammed into them.

But he wasn’t out yet; he was too sturdy for that.  He tried to get to his feet, and finally realized that Ladybug had wrapped him up.

\--

Replay clicked the watch, and flickered… into the exact same place.

“Oh, there’s bound to be something for this,” said Chat Noir, grinning, and striding forward.  “How about… You got second place, last time, and now, even when you go to a different second, you’re stuck in the same place?”

“Just take the watch,” groaned Ladybug.  Replay struggled against the cords, but couldn’t seem to move.  A shadow flickered across his face.

“Now,” said Chat Noir, reaching out, “let’s get this mess sorted out.”

Then, a _crunch,_ before his hand could make contact, as the villain crushed the watch in his hand.  He froze for an instant as the Akuma flickered out.  Then, the Akuma flitted back into the watch, and a familiar purple energy flowed out, covering the figure.

“Wh-“ began Chat Noir, stepping backwards as the figure grew, larger and larger.

He slipped to the side to avoid the retracting yo-yo, which had decided that whatever was happening here was beyond it.

The figure grew, ballooning out, exceptionally top-heavy, until, when it was several times his height, it finally congealed into a familiar shape.

“REMATCH!” Screamed Stoneheart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time: Our heroes take on Rematch.
> 
> In other news, I'm glad Rena Rouge actually got to be more useful this chapter. She was added to the team, and she kept being incapacitated, or unable to transform.


	4. Rematch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Continuing from precisely where the last chapter left off, Hawkmoth is running our heroes through a gauntlet of some of his greatest hits. Our heroes have come a long way since their first encounters, but will they be able to take on everything Hawkmoth can throw at them?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Both this chapter and the previous one are quite short, for this story, but I wanted to split it up simply because it was the perfect cliffhanger to break them apart with.

“Y’know,” said Chat Noir, stepping back from Stoneheart, “I remember him being bigger.”

“He’s still plenty big,” said Ladybug, spinning her yo-yo.

“Well, we also had to face down a whole horde of them,” said Chat Noir, managing to assume a place beside her, “so we’ll… be fine?”

“Let’s go with that.”

“Guys, we have another issue,” said Rena Rouge.

“Mmm?” said Ladybug, eyes fixed on the villain that hadn’t attacked yet.

“I’m on a timer.”

“Right.  So, we beat him quickly?” said Chat Noir.

Stoneheart charged.

“Sounds good.  The Akuma was…”

“In his fist,” finished Rena Rouge.

Chat Noir grinned. “The right one.  Perfect,” and as the other two scattered, he leapt.

Stoneheart hadn’t been expecting that, and reached up as Chat Noir scrambled over him, and hung from his right shoulder.

“Aw, c’mon,” said Chat Noir, grinning as the unwieldy figure tried to shake him off, “Why don’t you just try to grab me?”

Stoneheart roared, and reached back with his right fist to knock him off, but-

The baton extended, perfectly aimed, into the gap of his hand, and Chat Noir grinned as he felt the crumpled paper break.

“Not much of a rematch!” he called, and yelped as Stoneheart flickered out of existence under him.

\--

“I’m fine!” he called, as Ladybug started forward.  Rena could see her eyes flick across the area, but the Akuma wasn’t there.

“Rematch!” she called.

But it wasn’t her, because she hadn’t said that, but her voice-

Her heart seemed to stutter at the sight of herself.  Not herself.  Lady Wi-fi.

“It seems we’ve got a new hero to unmask today!” she called.  “An even better payoff than _last_ time!”

She grinned, the nervous one of a dog trying not to snap.  Right.  A new hero, who Lady Wi-fi didn’t know the identity of.  This was fun. Her necklace beeped.

Wi-fi flicked the screen of her phone, and held it up, as if taking a selfie.  “Welcome back for round two, Paris.  With luck, _this_ time we’ll get to find out the _real_ identities of Ladybug, Chat Noir, and… She looked at Alya, “Whoever this _new_ hero is.  And now, viewers, let get to the-

The yo-yo shattered the phone.

“What!?” called Wi-fi, before disappearing.

“Guess she had to get the monologue out first,” muttered Rena.

This time, she wasn’t looking for the butterfly, so she _saw_ Replay, suddenly on the ground again, with… The akuma fluttered back into the watch, and Rematch stood up, cloaked once more in the purple darkness.

“Rematch!” called Volpina, splitting into a dozen copies, and then a dozen more.

\--

Ladybug and Chat Noir regrouped at the assault, attempting to keep the illusions under control.

The problem was obvious; they were outnumbered, 50-2.  Worse, Rena Rouge was missing-

“Hey, Volpina!” she called from above.  The crowd looked up as one at her, where she was hanging from a window sill.

“You know what the difference is between this time and last time?”  She leaped into the middle of the crowd.  “The difference” she said, as the illusions vanished to reveal her, standing with the necklace, “is that _I_ know what an illusion looks like.”

Volpina vanished.

“Alright,” said Rena, “Listen; there’s a second when before he morphs where the Akuma is available.  I’m almost out of time, and I’ve already said my thing, so I’ll be back as soon as I’ve got Trixx fed, alright?”

“Rematch!” Called a shining armored figure, raising her sword.

“Hurry,” said Ladybug.

\--

That was, what, 3 villains in 30 seconds?  Hawkmoth supposed the early ones really _had_ been a bit lackluster, especially against enemies who knew their weaknesses already, but that still seemed fast.  Really, if he’d been _smart_ he would have upgraded them, but unfortunately, that would require the kind of quick thinking he wasn’t good at. On the other hand, they’d made it into the highlights of his _second_ season of villains, which would hopefully give them more pause.

Second season?  Second catalogue?  No, definitely season.   Catalogue was a bit too close to what he did as a civilian, and anyone who heard it would get an unwelcome glimpse into his identity.  Though, of course, it had been going on a year since he’d spoken to anyone as Hawkmoth.  All the same, it didn’t do to get sloppy.

Speaking of which…

Riposte was doing quite well.  The sturdiness of the item they had to break was slowing them down, and they clearly didn’t want Ladybug to use her Lucky Charm.  Rena Rouge had left, too, which would hopefully leave them down by… Well, he would have said a half, but after what she’d done to Replay, he was prepared to call it the full _one_.

Well, he couldn’t do much to help Riposte, and, seeing as they’d beat her last time, he would do well to prepare for the next potential fight.  Who would it be…

\--

She dove aside, letting the blade bury itself in the wall, just where she’d been.  Riposte’s head jerked to glare at her, as she pulled the sword free.

But too late.  Chat Noir flew, feet-first, into the blade, shattering it.

“No more rematches, please,” he said.

“There won’t _be_ any if we can get to the Akuma,” said Ladybug, lashing the yo-yo out, swiping the air just where the Akuma had been an instant ago.

“Maybe just one more,” she said, as another human figure rose up.

“Rematch!” called the figure, and the world began to blur at the edges.

“Oh, not him again,” said Ladybug, gritting her teeth at the wave of irrational fury.

“Me again,” agreed Vibrantes, stepping forward.  “And what do _you_ intend to do about it?”

“I’ll tell you what we _won’t_ do,” said Chat Noir, a rage-tinted grin on his face, “we won’t Cataclysm you.”

“No?  It worked _so_ well last time,” he said, and through the haze, he seemed to be grinning.

“Go,” said Ladybug, and they went, even as the world seemed to fade around them.

\--

Even Rena Rouge, busy to the point of single-mindedness, noticed the colors shift as she neared her room.  She didn’t, however, remember the villain, who had, after all, struck late at night, and hadn’t lasted more than a few long minutes.  All _she_ knew was that the worry about her friends seemed to creep into her mind a bit stronger, and she detransformed a bit more loudly than she’d meant to.  She grimaced at the thought of her siblings learning her identity.

“Alright, Trixx, what are you hungry for today?”

\--

The last of the emotional tide was ebbing away, and she was bent double, trying to haul her emotions back under control, and catch her breath from the unexpectedly hard strike Vibrantes had had this time.  More importantly though, she had to get to the Akuma before…

Well, before it began forming, like it just had _._

She felt a light pressure on her back.

“Hey,” said Chat Noir, as the next villain formed, “I love you, alright?”

She couldn’t stop the profuse blush from spreading across her face.  “You’re drunk, Chat.  As good as, anyway.”

“I was thinking it anyway,” he said.

The last of the unnatural emotions faded, but there was still plenty of the real stuff remaining.

“Later,” she said, straightening up.

“I’ll hold you to that,” he said, with a wink.

“Rematch!” she called.  Rather, _Chat Blanc_ called.

“And I’m sure you’ll hold _me_ ,” she said, charging herself.

She couldn’t see the grin, but she could hear it as at the edge of her hearing, she heard a soft, “If you insist.” And then the sound of his footfalls told her he was right behind her.

\--

“I see you added pockets,” she said, “very nice.”

Hawkmoth had to admit, in retrospect, that if _all_ of his villains had given feedback, preferably better than ‘add pockets,’ this rematch thing probably would have gone better.  All the same, he couldn’t deny a certain satisfaction at not having to deal with her jabs anymore.

“Oh, but you didn’t give me his new _move?_ Low blow.”

“I think you’ll keep up perfectly.”

“Did you mean _purr_ fectly.”

“No.”

\--

“Ladybug I’vegotherwheneveryouneedmetotakeherdown justgetready!”

“Catastrophe.”

“Wheneveryou actuallyIforgotaboutthatandalsowasshethatfastlast-“ He yelped as the ground collapsed.

They couldn’t keep going forever, especially now that Chat Noir was on a timer, and… That was more reporters.  Perfect, just fantastic.

She looked around.  Rematch would reappear _there,_ and Chat Blanc was _there_ , so…  A few careful steps back.

“Catastrophe.”

Chat Noir was on his knees, seemingly at an loss against the empowered version of himself.  A frantic strike with his right hand, grabbing at the charm bracelet, easily blocked.

She swung the yo-yo, and things seemed to happen very slowly.

First, Chat Blanc’s right hand made contact with Chat Noir’s shoulder.  The hand with the Catastrophe in it.

Second, she noticed the yo-yo, and without thinking, raised up her other hand to block.  The hand the had been holding back Chat Noir.

Third, Chat Noir, even as the crackling energy earthed itself into his body, wrenched the charm away.

Fourth, the yo-yo passed straight through Chat Blanc’s body, and continued in a massive arc, Ladybug turning away from Chat Noir to keep her eyes on it.

Fifth, the yo-yo, positioned perfectly, snatched the suddenly _there_ again Akuma out of the air, before it could flit back into the watch.  No more evildoing for _it._

Sixth, Chat Noir screamed.

She barely noticed Rena Rouge landing as she sprinted to her partner.

\--

The sensation was reminiscent of holding a Cataclysm, chaotic and shuddering.  It was as if that same feeling had grown far stronger and was filling his whole body.  For a moment, it would seem as if it was over, and then, without warning, it would spike, and his body would twist under the force of it, and when it did, he could almost feel himself breaking, bit by bit, under the force of it.

“Chat Noir!”  And suddenly, _she_ was there.  His vision was blurred, but he could still make out the shape of her face, the colors of her suit and mask.

He tried to force a smile, and, in the gap between a shudder, heard her exhale, softly.

“I can fix this,” she said.

Another shudder.

“Renewal,” she whispered, and her hands were on his chest, warm and reassuring.

Uncomfortably warm.  Hot, blazing, burning-

The fire seemed to spread through his body.  He shuddered again, but it was different.  It didn’t hurt, any more than the burning, anyway, and it didn’t end.  His mind slipped.

…

When he could think again, he was lying down, just as he had been before, but oddly comfortable.  He sat up, dazed, only half registering that Ladybug had pulled him up.  The turf around him was torn up, lines of destruction ranging out several feet from him.  The grass he’d been lying in was scorched and singed.  And Ladybug, arms around him, so _close_ to him, seemed drained, but the smile on her face was real.

“Miraculous Ladybug,” she said, not a shout this time, and the force blazed out, blinding.

“I didn’t say it earlier,” she said, as the cloud dispersed “But-

There was a beeping from his ring, which seemed strangely muffled.

And then he realized; it wasn’t muffled.  It was just covered by the sound he’d tuned out, the one he never enjoyed hearing.

Cameras.  Loud voices.  _Press_.  She’d noticed them too.

“Ladybug,” called a voice, “Does this villain signal the return of _more_ old enemies, or do you believe it was a fluke?”

“I,” she looked up, shaken from what she’d been about to say. “I think it’s a warning sign that Hawkmoth is developing, but not that we’ll be seeing more old villains.”

“Chat Noir,” called another, “should we take this closeness to mean that you two have finally lived up to the rumors regarding your relationship?”

“Wh-“ he said, looking around, only now _registering_ that her arms were around him.  The lights were bright, and he couldn’t come up with a better response than a shaken, “Yes?”

“Ladybug! What did you-“ “Alright, let’s not harass the heroes when they’re under a time constraint!” came the reassuringly definite voice of Rena Rouge.  His ring beeped again, down to only the paw now, and he pulled away from Ladybug.  Now was the time to be gone.

\--

“But-“

“I’m sure you’d _love_ to have _all_ of your questions answered, but _we_ do not have the time for it, so I will answer _one_ , and then I need to talk to Ladybug personally.  You!”

“Both Ladybug and Chat Noir have shown new abilities.  Do you have more as well?”

She stopped.  “I’ll get back to you on that one when I know more,” and she turned away, not paying attention to the noise behind her, stepping swiftly to Ladybug.

“Up there,” she said, pointing to a rooftop, “now.” And without waiting for a response, leapt away.

She straightened from her landing, and was trying to collect herself when Ladybug landed behind her.

“Rena-“ “This has gone far enough,” she said.  “You know who Chat Noir is.  I don’t know if this was his idea, or yours, or _what_ , but I can’t let it continue, because, if you recall, my best friend’s _heart_ is on the line.”

“Listen, I can… We can talk about this, alright?  But not right now.  I’m halfway out of time, and… Okay.  Meet me later, okay, and we can talk about this properly.”

“Where?”

…

Alya had had a knot in her guts from the whole situation.  It had taken significant effort not to go early, but she’d held back.

She couldn’t believe that- Make that a knot in her guts and a softly burning anger.  She wasn’t sure if the anger was at Ladybug, Adrien, or herself.

Ladybug, of course, _had_ to know that Chat Noir had a girlfriend already, considering she knew who he was.  She couldn’t easily believe that her biggest hero would knowingly be involved in something like this, and the same applied to Adrien; she’d never quite had Marinette’s admiration for him, but she could see where it came from.  He wasn’t the type for this, and for all Chat Noir tried to project that roguish demeanor, he was _still_ Adrien underneath it.

On the other hand, she couldn’t cough up any extenuating circumstances that would explain this adequately, which was why she’d only been able to wait until she’d be five minutes early to their meeting spot.

Ladybug was already there, on the rooftop across from Marinette’s house.  Surely, she knew had to know that _that_ was where Marinette lived.  She _had_ to know how close she was to the same girl that she was, by all appearances, ruining the relationship of.

Rena Rouge landed on the roof, hands clenching involuntarily at the whole situation.  She took a deep breath, and tried to calm down.  Maybe Ladybug had an explanation for all of this, and everything was okay.

Ladybug gave her a nod of acknowledgement, seeming to be preoccupied with something.

Eventually, it became clear that Ladybug wasn’t going to say anything soon.  Then it was up to her.

“Ladybug,” she said, eventually.

Ladybug looked up, without saying a word.

“You know who Chat Noir _really_ is.”

She nodded.

“Then you know…  You know that he already has a girlfriend, right?”

“Rena…”

“You know that, don’t you!?”

She took a deep breath, and sighed.  She nodded.

“Then, are you the two of you really… Is he lying to the press for some reason?”

Ladybug looked up and seemed to consider her response for an inordinately long time.

“It’d be so much easier to tell you yes, but this is already such a mess…” she said, her head sinking back down again.

“He was telling the truth earlier.”  It wasn’t a question.

“Such a mess…” she repeated, not responding.

“What is?”  The words were starting to come out harder now. Her lack of a proper response told Rena all she needed to know.  Ladybug had been her hero for a _long_ time now, but _nobody_ messed with Marinette, “You’re supposed to be a hero, and, what, you’re taking advantage of your partners secret identity to let him cheat on his girlfriend?”

Ladybug looked up sharply.  “He doesn’t…!  The mess isn’t me, or him cheating on anyone, or… Anyone.  It’s the whole situation.  There’s only two ways out of this, and one makes you hate me, and I’m not supposed to do the other-”

Rena froze, and only through a force of will did she keep her tone even.  “Supposed to?  _Now_ you’re worrying about what you’re _supposed_ to do?  The time for _that_ was _before_ you started- _“_

“Rena!  Listen,” Ladybug sighed, and turned away, “I get it.  I don’t have a choice.  Follow me.”

She jumped, through the darkening night, across the street… To Marinette’s balcony.

Rena didn’t hesitate to follow; She’d never have believed that Ladybug would harm a civilian, but she’d never have believed any of this, either.

She landed on Marinette’s roof, flute in hand, ready for the impossible.

But Ladybug wasn’t going for the trapdoor.  She was waiting.

Ladybug’s fists clenched, and her face screwed up as if she was concentrating on something.

“Alright,” she said, “I just…  Please don’t make too much noise.”

“What are-“

“Spots off.”

\--

Her first expression was blank shock, uncomprehending.  Then, her eyes widened, as she seemed to understand the obvious.  Then she looked down, mouthing a few words nodding as if churning a thought through.  Finally, she looked back at Ladybug.

“Oooohhhhh.”  The sound began to shudder into a laugh as a grin crept across her face, wider and wider.

Then, in a second, her face seemed to be too full of happiness to contain it all.  Alya clapped her shaking hands onto Marinette’s shoulders, the laugh growing ragged, as she gasped in more air.

“Girrrrrlllll!?”  The single word rose, almost worrying in its intensity.

And then, suddenly, Marinette gasped, as Alya pulled her into a painfully tight hug, the laugh, infectious and joyful, sounding in her ear.

“I’ve got to be the biggest idiot in Paris!” said Alya.

“Alya!” she managed to struggle out past an involuntary laugh, “Alya!  Ease up a bit, I can’t breathe!  And please, detransform!  This is _way_ too suspicious if you’re in costume.”

“I- yeah!  Yeah, sure!  Hunting’s done, Trixx.” She walked a few paces away, and then spun, eyes gleaming.  “I have _questions_.”

Marinette laughed.  “I’m sure you do.  How about we take this _inside_ , though, and keep it quiet so you don’t tell my parents everything through the floor.”

…

By the time she’d gotten down the ladder, Alya was sitting at a chair, laughing with her head in her hands.  “I swear,” she said, as Marinette made it to the floor, “I almost had you, like, 50 times.”

Marinette shrugged, “You got close.”

“I mean, I actually _did_ figure out Chat Noir.”

“And if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t know about _me_ now.”

For a second, Alya didn’t say anything.  Then, after a second, she seemed to rally herself, and looked up, breathing steady.

“So,” she said, “what now?” “Now,” said Marinette, “We have to be even more careful than before.  If Hawkmoth catches _any_ of us, _all_ of our identities are at risk.  That’s me, that’s you, that’s Adrien, that’s _everyone_ any of us care about.”

“Well... At least I can talk to you about hero stuff now.”

Marinette smiled.  “I guess you can.”

“I think we both know what the first big thing is, though,” she said, sliding her chair closer.

“And what _is_ the first big thing?”

Alya grabbed her shoulder and gave it a vigorous shake.  “We’re both _superheroes!”_

“I know,” said Marinette, “and, for what it’s worth, I think my parents would be fine if you wanted to sleep over tonight.  Plenty of time to ask me _anything,_ and, I’d imagine, time for Tikki and Trixx to actually talk to each other for once.”

“I would love that!” said Tikki, flitting into view.

Alya grinned, clearly delighted.  “So you’re Ladybugs kwami.  Hi!”

“Hello!  Marinette’s told me a lot about you!”

“Good things?” said Alya, with a glance at Marinette.

“Of _course_ , you’re her best friend.”

Alya nodded, satisfied.  “So,” she said, looking down at herself, “you coming out to talk, Trixx?”

“Of course,” said Trixx from on top of Marinette’s computer.

“When did you get up there?”

“I was already here when you sat down,” said Trixx, evidently pleased with her mild confusion.

“Alright, you guys have fun.”

“I _think_ fun will be when we actually get to see Plagg again,” said Trixx, his voice fading as the kwamis went to a corner of the room, “I miss watching him lose at cards.”  Tikki just giggled.

“So…” said Alya, turning back to Marinette, her smile suddenly cut with an evil edge.  “Ask you _anything,_ you said _?_ Like, for instance…”  She looked side to side, conspiratorially, “The _full_ story about you and Adrien.”

“Alya!” said Marinette, blushing slightly.

“C’mon, girl, spill!  There’s a whole _side_ here that I haven’t even gotten to _hear_ about.”

“Alright, alright, fine, if you _really_ want to know…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that looks like all the identity drama handled, folks! Surely we won't have to deal with any more of it!
> 
> But of course, I'm lying. More on that in the next chapter.


	5. Nino Does the Impossible

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Replay and Rematch left our heroes with a great deal to deal with, but, in their haste, they forgot something. Someone.

_The 1 kilo race was well underway when things went predictably wrong._

_A burning, red blur zipped across the track, and the camera went dead._

_“Well,” said, Nino, trying not to let the worry he was feeling slip into his voice, “I guess he wasn’t okay.”_

_Alya swore quietly on the other end, and the line went dead._

_“Alya?” he said, already knowing that she was gone._

_Huh._

_He wanted to call her, but it had sounded like she’d hung up.  Had something come up?_

_He leaned back, and sighed.  Something weird was going on, no doubt about it, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what.  He looked down at his phone, and stared.  Alya was offline._

_She was never offline.  She didn’t always respond immediately, but she was always online, at least._

_…_

_So, Alya was missing.  That wasn’t good.  Of course, she was more than capable of keeping herself safe, even if she kept rushing after villains to get more footage for the Ladyblog, but to have her just vanish like that...  There was no way to keep himself from worrying._

_But worrying wouldn’t do any good, would it.  What might help would be calling a friend.  He pulled his phone back up and scrolled to Adrien…_

_Who, even as he looked, went offline._

_No way._

_…_

_His girlfriend and his best friend had both gone offline simultaneously._

_Well, Marinette knew both of them really well, so maybe she…_

_Was offline too._

…

Nino had never spotted Marinette’s crush on Adrien, but that didn’t mean he was _totally_ oblivious.  After all, Marinette had never really been directly tied to him.  She was Alya’s best friend, and she was _together_ with Adrien now, but the two of them didn’t _do_ that much together.  It wasn’t his business.

On the other hand, it _was_ his business when strange things kept happening; namely, when his friends kept going missing.  Study sessions interrupted at least twice now, not to mention all those strange, lingering thoughts that kept showing up in his head.  The issue wasn’t that his mind kept suggesting that Rena Rouge was about to show up to a fight, or that Ladybug would have to leave in _that_ direction.  The issue was that it was usually right.  It was like having a sixth sense that had an uncanny knack for figuring out what the heroes were about to do.  The third strange thing that he’d been dealing with was the fact that _every time_ he thought about one of the first two, the other would pop into his head almost immediately, and make it nearly impossible to focus on one at a time. _Brains were funny like that; they did inexplicable things sometimes._

It was like…  Like… _Didn’t he have something he needed to be doing._

He shook his head.  No.  No he didn’t.  He’d marked plenty of time to talk with Alya, and they were barely into it.  Anyway, what had he been thinking about?  _Surely nothing worth dwelling on._ He blinked.  Right!  He’d been thinking about how his mind kept trying to connect two issues that weren’t related in the slightest.  _It didn’t make sense, why he would keep associating his sixth sense about Paris’ heroes to his friends’ disappearances._

Something felt wrong about that sentence, but he couldn’t place what.  It felt like he’d said something, and everyone was looking at him funny, but he didn’t know what he’d said.

What if…  What if they were related?

He put a hand to his forehead.  Why did that thought make his brain feel like he’d put it through the wringer?  But it made sense, now that he thought of it; didn’t people always talk about knowing things they didn’t know they knew?

So, somehow, the problems were related; _in some distant sense, probably, since it was highly unlikely that his friends had anything to do with the superheroes._

He sat there for a moment, and looked back up at the broadcast from the track.  The heroes were all there now, still facing the villain, just like he’d have expected. _Obviously, since he’d seen the villain appear._

There was a conclusion from this; he knew there was.   _Did there really have to be, though?_

A Mirage from Rena Rouge.  Something in the way she shouted was familiar.  His brow furrowed, as he tried to make his brain finish the thought it had begun.

She was…  He should know this.

She was… _Human?  A superhero?  Orange? A fox?_

All of those were, he assumed, roughly accurate, but not what he was looking for.

He rested his forehead in his hands, silent.  Seconds passed, then minutes.

What did he know that he didn't know that he knew?  Why did he know it? There was something about Rena Rouge that stuck in his head.  She was familiar; hell, all of them were. It was like he knew her. Why? How could he possibly know her?  _This sounded like a whole separate issue from what he’d been thinking about._

Rena Rouge.

Rena Rouge was... he closed his eyes and focused.  What did he know about her?

He looked back up.  Perfectly timed, Ladybug snatched the Akuma out of the air.  Chat Noir seemed to be in immense pain, but she sprinted to him, and after a few seconds, he stopped convulsing and… Exploded in a flash of light?   No.  Not exploded, he was still there.

He could see a horde of reporters rushing forward, and switched the channel to one of the _actual_ news teams, rather than the sports broadcast.

There was the traditional torrent of restorative energy as Ladybug put things to rights. The camera crew advanced on the heroes, the group of reporters tried to start some kind of after-battle interview.

“Ladybug,” called a voice, “Does this villain signal the return of _more_ old enemies, or do you believe it was a fluke?”

“I,” she looked up, “I think it’s a warning sign that Hawkmoth is developing, but not that we’ll be seeing more old villains.”

“Chat Noir,” called another, “should we take this closeness to mean that you two have finally lived up to the rumors regarding your relationship?”

“Wh-“ he said, looking around.  He offered a shaky “Yes?”

“Ladybug! What did you-“ Then, suddenly in the middle of the screen, Rena Rouge.  Her face was like a kick to the gut.  It was _familiar_.  “Alright, let’s not harass the heroes when they’re under a time constraint!” she said, and _that_ was familiar, too.  Chat Noir managed to make off across the rooftops.

“But-“  He closed his eyes.  He had a good ear for sounds, and he _always_ thought better with his eyes closed

“I’m sure you’d _love_ to have _all_ of your questions answered, but _we_ do not have the time for it, so I will answer _one_ , and then I need to talk to Ladybug personally.  You!” said Rena Rouge

“Both Ladybug and Chat Noir have shown new abilities.  Do you have more as well?”

“I’ll get back to you on that one when I know more,” said Alya, in her reporter voice.

Alya?  Why had he thought Alya?  He was listening to...

Alya.  He was listening to Alya, because Alya was Rena Rouge.

It wasn't that hard.

Alya was Rena Rouge.  He opened his eyes. She had to be; it was simple.  Not just simple; it was obvious. He should've seen it.  He _had_ seen it, he just hadn't been able to think it.

Did Marinette know?  Did Adrien?

 _Of course not_ , came the thought, _why would they?_

Maybe because they were Ladybug and Chat Noir.

_...  Doubtful._

Not doubtful.  Obvious.  He was leaned forward, head in his hands, and finally, as the last piece fell into place, _he_ fell too, back against his chair.

He was friends with literal superheroes.  His three _best friends_ were superheroes.  His _girlfriend_ was a superhero.

He let out a long, low groan.  His head was aching.

"You alright in there, Nino?" came a voice from outside.

"Yeah!" he responded.  "Just figured something out after thinking about it for way too long."

"More music?"

Music?  This wasn't exactly... "Trying to figure out where a sound came from," he said.

"Alright.  Dinner's just about ready."

"Cool!" he said, despite not especially feeling it.  Food wasn't exactly at the forefront of his mind, right now, and he really wasn’t that hungry.

\--

Days passed before anything else happened; it had seemed like a poor choice to let them know that he knew, and they hadn’t done anything to make it necessary.

He'd been visiting Adrien, one of the rare times he was ever allowed at his house.

Adrien had suggested at least hanging out for a bit, before he had his Chinese practice.  Nathalie had looked like she'd wanted to dispute it, but Nino had just been able to spot her expression soften at Adrien's earnest request.  She glanced down at a tablet in her hand, looked up, and then said, deadpan as ever, "Your father will be upset if he interferes in any way with your studies.  He will need to leave as soon as your tutor arrives."

"Thank you so much, Nathalie!" said Adrien, hugging her.  For an instant, her expression was shocked, and then, Nino could just see a trace of a smile before she recovered herself.  "Adrien, this is extremely unprofessional," she said, carefully pushing him back, and straightening her suit.

Adrien just laughed, and entered the car, gesturing for Nino to follow.  "You sound just like Father when you say that," he said, as he entered. Nathalie stared straight forward for the entire ride to Adrien's house, while the two of them sat in the back and talked.

Adrien's room was still one of the coolest things he'd ever seen.  The design was a strange cross of modern and 90s, but the effect was great.  Mr. Agreste really _was_ rich, and it showed.

They had almost an hour just to talk, and they did.  For all they were best friends, Nino rarely ever had the chance to talk to him for more than a few minutes.

He was sitting up on the high ground, while Adrien was down below when there was a polite knock at the door.

Adrien jumped up and answered.  "Hello," came a soft, accented voice.  That had to be his Chinese tutor.

“Oh!  Hello again,” said Adrien, sounding almost nervous.

"Keeping up with your studies?" came the voice.

"Of course," said Adrien.

"And keeping up with your secrets?"

Adrien bristled at that, and Nino could see his eyes flick over.

The face of an old man slid into sight.  He looked at Nino, then at Adrien, then back at Nino.  Nino might have glimpsed the same unease, but if it was there, it was immediately smoothed over.  "Hello," he said, "I do not believe we have met."

"That's Nino, my best friend, but he's not here for tutoring," said Adrien, "he's just visiting."

"I see.  Well then, shall we begin?"

"If you guys are starting," said Nino, "I should probably get going.  Don’t want to get in the way."

There was a shudder in the room, like an earthquake.

That was another attack.

Nino looked over at the old man.  The old man looked over at Nino.

"You probably _should_ , yes," said the man, just as Nino said, "Didn't your old man say you weren't supposed to have Chinese today so you could work on piano?"

Adrien stood almost midway between them, glancing back and forth.  He seemed concerned. "I mean-"

"I see," said the man, not looking at Adrien.  He seemed focused on Nino. "then perhaps we should both be going.  It is a shame, of course, but I _do_ have some business of my own I have been meaning to attend to."

They slowly walked to the door, trying not to look like they were in a standoff.

Adrien stared on, visibly confused and worried.

\--

Well, thankfully, Nino's little misremembrance of his schedule was more or less to his advantage, but something was clearly off.  Did they know each other?

\--

"You keep good company," said the man, as they walked unusually slowly to the exit.

"Yup."

"Your friend risked what must have felt like quite a lot at the time to help me."

"Oh?"

He shrugged, "I had fallen.  He interrupted his business to help me up."

"Business?"

"He was attempting to enter the school before his chaperones could reach him.  Because of his gesture, he failed."

That was familiar. "That was back at the start of the school year, right?" said Nino.

"Yes."

Right about when Cat Noir and Ladybug had first appeared.

They finally cleared the outer gate.  They were standing on the street.

This man knew that Adrien had secrets.  They had met just as Cat Noir had appeared.

"Did you give him his ring?" he asked.

The man stopped dead in his tracks, and turned a look on him.

"That is a strange question," he said.

Nino shrugged.  "Just got a feeling."

He stood there, seeming to appraise Nino.  "I did," he said, eventually.

"You picked the right person to give it to," he said.

"I suppose, as his best friend, he tells you his secrets?"

Nino shook his head, "Nah, if he keeps secrets, he _really_ keeps them."

"Then how did you find out?"

"Seemed pretty obvious."

The man gave him a look, surprised, more than anything.  There was a black blur above them. They both watched Cat Noir fly by overhead.

"Really?"

"I mean, looking back.  At the time, it took me _way_ too long to figure it out."

"That is remarkable.  Truly, it is." He slowly nodded, and then reached into his pocket, and pulled out a piece of paper.  He ripped off a scrap and wrote something on it. "I believe I might need to talk to you further. Please, whenever you have a moment."

Nino looked down at the scrap.  It was an address. He'd never been there, but he knew the street; reputable enough.  Probably the tutoring agency?

He looked back up, and the man was already most of the way down the street.  There was no way he should have moved so far so quickly, and yet...

Nino went home.  The villain wasn't around here, thankfully, so there wasn't any real trouble that way, but he was confused.  The person who'd given Adrien the ring that let him turn into Cat Noir was his Chinese tutor. He'd probably given _Marinette_ her earrings, too, and, for that matter, probably given Alya the necklace.  The problem was, though, he couldn't ask his friends, if only because that would be telling them they'd failed. Seemed kind of rude.

\--

In the end, it was three days and one villain during _another_ study session.  The study session was what pushed Nino over the edge. His group was eternally deserting him because of villains. It didn't bother him to be alone, or that they had to find an excuse to leave, every time.  That was superhero 101; if you had to lie to maintain your secret identity, you did. What bothered him was that they were putting themselves in danger, and leaving him alone to, what, hope they made it back safe?  Keep studying? How was he supposed to study when they were out there, risking their lives for Paris. Now that he knew that he knew the names behind the masks, there wasn't that illusion that their victory was assured.  These were human beings, with limits. One of these times, he was going to watch them fail, and be powerless to help them.

It was starting to make him anxious, and when another villain, this one something to do with fractures; breaking things?  The point was, he had to do something, and if nothing else, maybe visiting that address would explain some things.

So he walked.  He was halfway out of the school when the news came in that the villain was defeated.  The streets were safe again.

\--

Sooner, rather than later, he was outside of a small building, with a sign that unobtrusively described it as a massage parlor, with the same address from the note on the sign.  He looked at it.  It wasn’t a tutoring agency.  It wasn’t much of _anything_.

He straightened his hat, took a breath, and entered.

It was a cramped room, with chairs lining the wall.  A waiting room? There was a desk at the back, with nobody at it.  It felt like the place was abandoned, somehow. If the sign was to be believed, the oddly occult feeling he got from this place was wrong.  Not, of course, that there was anything really visible, but maybe it was one of those things where you only got to see that stuff if you were invited. Maybe the same stuff that turned you into a hero came with a curse?  Maybe... Maybe maybe was a stupid word. There was a bell on the desk. He dinged it.

For a long second, nothing happened.  Then, a door behind the desk opened, and standing in the doorway...  Same grey hair, same red shirt with the white flowers on it. Same oddly tranquil expression.

"Ah!" he said, seeing Nino, "I am glad to see you.  I'm sure you have questions.  I have some of my own."

"Alright," he said.

"Please, follow me.”

Nino hesitated, but decided that if Adrien trusted this man, which it seemed he did, _he_ was probably safe.  He walked into the back room.

It was a strange room; not quite cursed shop of curios, but certainly strange.  It could have been a small dance parlour, with the gramophone in the back, or... The waiting room was sort of dentist-y, but there was no chair back here. There was a teapot, as well as an *actual* pot, but they didn't look like something from a restaurant. There _was_ a mat in the middle of the room, suggesting that the sign might have been telling the truth.

More to the point, there was something very important that he hadn't really considered.

"What's your name?" He asked.

The man looked over at him, from the Gramophone.  "Your friends, those of them that have spoken to me, call me Master Fu."

"Fu?"

He nodded.

“ _Master_ Fu?”

He nodded again.

“Master of what?”

He laughed, gently.  “An excellent question!”

It didn’t seem he was going to explain further.  "'kay," he said.  "You wanted to explain stuff?"

Master Fu shrugged.  "First, I wanted to ask you some questions."

"Shoot."

"How did you discover the secret identity of Cat Noir?"

"I mean, my three best friends all keep going missing simultaneously, every time there's a villain, and they look a lot like the heroes.  It's pretty obvious. Actually, I'm more surprised that I didn't figure it out sooner."

"Most people are, when they finally realize an identity.  There's a reason for that." He looked at his wrist, as if the bracelet he was wearing was a watch.  "It's part of possessing a Miraculous. It is more than a mask, it is a disguise, and one that is extremely difficult to pierce.  The fact that you were able to is unusual."

"So that's why I had to think so long about it?"

"Doubtless."

...

"So,” he said, oddly businesslike, “You know.  Now what?"

Nino looked up at him, a faint frown on his face.  "What do you mean?"

Fu shrugged.  "You know who they are.  What will you do with that knowledge?"

"I mean, there's not much I _can_ do. "

"Why? "

Nino laughed.  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not exactly the strongest.  Or, y’know, the smartest.  I mean, if they need a theme song or something, _maybe_ , but I’m pretty sure Clara Nightingale already did that anyway.”

“You don’t think you have anything to offer them.”

“I’d just get in their way.” “And if you _did_ have a way to help them?”

He shrugged, "then I would."

Master Fu looked at him for a second, and then nodded slowly.  Finally, he seemed to move his mind forward.  "Well then! Did you have any other questions of your own?"

"Alright, um… What is this place?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like, you were doing tutoring, but the sign said massage parlor, and it doesn’t really look like either of those, and it doesn't look like anything else."

Fu shrugged.  "It is my home.  I retired long ago.  Occasionally, simply to keep up appearances, I will take a client, but for the most part, it is simply where I live."

"Oh."

"Is that all?"

"I guess."

"Then I have one more question, before you leave.  What is your name?"

"Nino."

"I know _that_."

"Oh.  Lahiffe.  Nino Lahiffe."

He nodded.  "Then goodbye, Mr. Lahiffe.  I'm sure we'll speak again soon enough."

\--

"Wayzz?"

"Here."

"What did you think of him?"

"He sounded very earnest about what he said."

"And he solved things without help."

"Strong-willed, then."

"But not brash."

"He would do well, given a Miraculous."

"I have no doubt, Wayzz.  And we have good reason to believe he would not clash with the others."

"Of course.  Though, there are still the inherent dangers of bestowing one."

"Naturally.  It would have to be done cautiously, and only when necessary.  And, of course, there is the issue of the Miraculous I would give him."

"I would, of course, help with the selection."

"Hm.  I have a suspicion that the question would not be which Miraculous, but the trouble of parting with it."

"...  I see."

"We've been together for a long, long time, Wayzz."

"Yes.  We have.”  The kwami didn’t say anything for a moment.  Then, quietly, he said, “I _will_ miss you.”

Master Fu nodded.  “And I, you.  Another reason to wait as long as possible.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we thought the identity troubles were done, and here comes another alter-ego, ready to mess up the equilibrium.  
> Welcome back to hell. But I digress.
> 
> Next time!  
> Our heroes, in the course of their day, are rudely interrupted by Blot, a villain determined to paint the world in their colors, in recompense for the vandalism of their art.


End file.
